High-flying Moyes happy to prove the doubters wrong

Everton 1 Middlesbrough 0

The Everton chief has seen his battling side remain unbeaten from the opening day of the season and they took themselves into the top three by overcoming Middlesbrough 1-0 at Goodison Park thanks to a Marcus Bent second-half goal.

For a club most had written off after a summer of internal crisis, Everton are certainly confounding the critics.

Moyes said: “This is just going on and on, the players are doing their speaking on the pitch. It has been like that from the start of the season.

“The satisfaction I get is that we were written off by most people. We are not over it and I am not daft enough to say so because then you are just setting yourselves up.

“The players and myself have had a long, hard summer and we have all suffered. The only way we could put it right was when we came back to training. The boys have been honest, and when you are that and do everything to the best of your ability then nobody can complain. That is what we are doing.”

Everton skipper Alan Stubbs put the success down to teamwork.

He said: “We win as a team and we defend as a team, everyone can see that. We deserved the result 100%.

“People may look at Boro having been in Europe in midweek but if you do that you are looking for excuses.

“We dealt with everything they threw at us. We could even have got a couple more towards the end. Marcus did brilliantly all on his own up front and all credit that he scored.”

Boro boss Steve McClaren did blame the demands of his side’s UEFA Cup win over Banik Ostrava on Thursday for the defeat.

He said: “Teams always suffer fatigue after a European game in midweek, it was a very emotional night for all of us and it showed in the way we started.

“We did not play to our full potential in the first half, but I felt we got going after that and were very unfortunate not to get anything from the game. But before the European game I told the lads that they will have to learn to cope with a league game straight afterwards.

“We want to be in this sort of position so we must learn to handle that side of things better.

“We weathered their storm and I felt that for much of the last half hour we were the better side and were going to win it, we just couldn’t finish off our chances. They worked very hard and were well organised, but we should have got something from the game.”

EVERTON: Martyn, Hibbert, Stubbs, Weir, Pistone, Osman, Watson (McFadden 81), Carsley, Gravesen, Kilbane, Bent (Ferguson 74).

MIDDLESBROUGH: Schwarzer, Parnaby, Southgate, Riggott, Queudrue, Nemeth (Doriva 45), Parlour, Boateng, Zenden (Downing 59), Hasselbaink, Viduka (Job 59).

Referee: H Webb (S Yorkshire).