An insight into what drives Moyes

FOR the first time in years, David Moyes dropped his guard and revealed some of his cards on Saturday evening.

With most of his media duties done, the Everton manager, who had just witnessed a 2-0 victory for his side over Bolton Wanderers courtesy of goals from Mikel Arteta and Steven Pienaar, stood relaxed at the top of the stairs at the back of Everton’s press box and spoke eloquently about his eight years in charge at Goodison Park.

That anniversary came and went last week in the same understated manner as the others since Moyes arrived to try and undo a decade’s worth of mismanagement and underachievement at a club that was one of the biggest in the country in the mid-1980s.

His manner may be understated but his impact over that time – and certainly at the moment – is anything but. This was Everton’s seventh successive home victory in the Premier League, yet Moyes wants more, more, more.

“This is what I do,” Moyes said, before offering an even deeper glimpse into an hitherto unknown psyche.

“I’ve never really known anything else other than football. If I wasn’t in this job I would be in another job and wanting to manage and be involved in football. Even if it was just working with kids. My thing in life is to work around football.

“Every week I have to try and think about if our training is right and you have to do the best with your players and I have had to evolve as a manager since I arrived. I think we’ve evolved as a club now, even today, I’m looking for total perfection.”

Everton’s performance was far from perfect but that mattered little after a victory that further exacerbated the feeling of what might have been this year if Moyes had been able to call upon the likes of Arteta, Phil Jagielka and Yakubu for the whole of the season rather than less than half of it.

Their terrible inj-uries aligned with a shock- ing Autumn period saw Everton adrift and back in the bottom half of the table – which used to be familiar territory in the immediate pre-Moyes years – but since losing at home to Liverpool on November 29, they have yet to taste another league defeat. “If only” is a sentiment that is perfectly understandable.

“I think we have got a really good potential and a really good group of players and I want us to go on again,” he added.

“It gives me great hope. I think we are starting to believe and understand that we are a good team now. I think the wins against the top teams have made us realise that we are much closer than probably we have ever been.”

Against a stoic Bolton side, it took the dismissal of their defender Gretar Steinsson with 20 minutes to go to finally raise the tempo and unlock Owen Coyle’s back four.

The opening hour and a bit had been notable for practically nothing, apart from Victor Anichebe’s exit on a stretcher and subsequent hospitalisation after being caught in the ribs by Paul Robinson, and a draw looked the most likely result.

However, when Steinsson tangled with Yakubu as the last defender, Alan Wiley showed him a straight red card before Arteta superbly curled the ball into the bottom corner for the opening goal.

It sapped Bolton’s mental strength and broke their spirit which then allowed Pienaar to sweep home a second for Everton in the dying moments to confirm the victory and underline exactly what Moyes is trying to do at the club.

The Everton glory days are not back. But they are not too far away either.

“The job David Moyes has done is testimony to him,” Bolton manager Owen Coyle charitably said afterwards. “When he first came in he had to juggle some balls and first of all they were solid, and now he’s adding a bit of flair. Everton have those quality players at their disposal and they’re the role model that a lot of clubs will look at.

“I was happy with how we played today and we will get better – we just have to make sure we are in the league to do that. That has to remain our first priority and then we can go on from there.”

MATCH RATING: *** – It was a pedestrian affair really and never took off. Everton were just about good value for the win.

REFEREE: Alan Wiley (Staffordshire) 6 – The sending off was strictly correct but still a harsh decision but he ran the game well overall.