Everton’s Gareth Barry has called on his teammates to ensure they make a winning start to the new Premier League season against Watford.

The Toffees welcome the top flight new boys to Goodison Park for Saturday’s big kick-off and the ex-Manchester City midfielder highlighted the importance of getting some momentum early on in the campaign.

After Watford, Roberto Martinez and his players face Southampton, Manchester City, Tottenham and Chelsea in successive league outings.

Barry says beating the Hornets is important in terms of giving them belief they can win against quality opposition.

He told evertonfc.com: “Once you get your confidence up you feel you can beat anybody so getting off to a good start in the season is very important.”

Everton drew 2-2 with new boys Leicester on the opening day of last season and Barry wants to learn from that result.

The Toffees failed to register a home league win until the 18th October last season, something Barry is urging them to put that to rights in front of a bumper crowd this weekend.

“Facing Watford is similar to last season when we played newly-promoted Leicester on the opening day,” he said.

“It probably isn’t ideal to be playing these teams early on – especially on the first weekend – but we are at home, we will be at Goodison against a sell-out crowd so we have to back ourselves to get the three points.”

Everton are 1.73 to beat Watford on Saturday, with the visitors 4.75 and the stalemate 3.80.