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David Moyes has earned 17 points from his 11 Premier League games back in charge at Everton — equalling their tally from their first 19 matches under Sean Dyche — while they sit 14 clear of relegation.
Their 1-0 defeat to Liverpool in the Merseyside derby will sting, but with only eight games remaining, their top-flight status looks secure as they edge towards a massive summer rebuild and, finally, a new stadium.
On the latest episode of The Athletic FC Podcast, Ayo Akinwolere was joined by Everton reporter Paddy Boyland and Oli Kay to discuss Moyes’ impact and why he’s the right man to lead the club into their new era. Listen to the full episode below or wherever you get your podcasts.
A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available on YouTube below or in The Athletic FC Podcast feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Ayo: Paddy, ahead of their visit to Anfield, you wrote on The Athletic about how David Moyes has transformed Everton in just 10 games, and going into the match, Everton were unbeaten in their last nine. A lot of those were draws, but, inevitably, Everton were in a good state heading to Anfield and they’re currently 14 points off relegation. It’s fair to say David Moyes has come in and, for the foreseeable, it’s job done, right?
Paddy: It’s remarkable the extent of the turnaround in such a short space of time.
He came in January after Dyche left and after his first game against Aston Villa, which ended in a defeat, he came to the press conference ashen-faced, talking about the sheer scale of the job that awaited him. He said, “I’m no magician, this can’t be fixed overnight.” Well, more or less, it has been fixed overnight when you look at Everton’s position in the league table.
They have had to use sticking-plaster solutions because there’s a general admission, particularly in forward areas, that Everton’s squad is barely fit for purpose in the Premier League. Moyes is doing whatever he can with short-term fixes to get them over the line into that new stadium and what will have to be a massive summer rebuild. But there are a few things to draw on here. The first is the sense of reassurance that Moyes’ return has given everyone at the club. You could immediately see when Dyche went and Moyes came in that it was fresh ideas, fresh perspectives and just about everything seemed to lift. I went to his first press conference at Finch Farm and for the first time in about three or four months, I’d seen people smile.
He’s made changes, but I wouldn’t say he’s completely overhauled Dyche’s system. It’s been tweaked here or there, but he’s certainly given these players a lot more confidence to go out and express themselves in an attacking sense. They’ve looked much more potent in the final third beyond the Anfield game.
It’s remarkable what he’s done and full credit to him. There are a lot of draws in there, but they’re what I describe as good draws because Everton have gone toe-to-toe with the opposition. If you look at the draw away at Brentford, Beto missed three one-on-ones. Even in the defeat to Liverpool, Beto went through and arguably had the biggest chance of the game. If he scored, the game may well have looked different at the end. These are good positive signs and we all know the resources are not up to scratch for Moyes.
Oli: When Paddy was talking, I was just thinking about when I was reporting on Everton in 2002 when Moyes first arrived. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Everton was a miserable place. Walter Smith, probably similar in some ways to Sean Dyche, had done a job just to keep the club afloat, but it wasn’t really going anywhere. They were threatened with relegation late in the 2001-02 season, then Moyes came in from Preston. It was a completely different stage of his career.
He was the youngest manager in the Premier League then; he’s now the oldest manager in the Premier League. But he came in, lifted the place and electrified it straight away. I was there at that press conference where he talked about Everton being the people’s club and it just seemed to light something within the fan base. They had a home game against Fulham a couple of days later and were ahead after about 30 seconds and it feels slightly similar now.
Everton have been through this doldrums period, circling the drain and looking like a club with relegation just waiting to happen, but he’s come in and lifted it. Sean Dyche lifted it when he came in. Frank Lampard lifted it when he came in. And Rafael Benitez’s initial impact lifted it. But it felt for four or five years that Everton were just frantically treading water, trying to keep afloat and trying to get ready for the new stadium.
That’s finally on the horizon and it feels appropriate that it’s David Moyes, who probably put a lot of the building blocks in place for the modern Everton, to lead this new era. Some of those building blocks were neglected and things were falling apart a bit by the time he came back, which was more to do with ownership issues than anything else. But Moyes is back now and he just seems to have a connection with the club, he is a better fit for Everton than any of the other managers they’ve had since he first left.
I think he would say he’s a much smarter, more experienced manager than the one who left nearly 12 years ago. Sometimes, those difficult experiences of being sacked can really break a manager. Particularly at Sunderland, where you just thought, ‘He looks so damaged and bruised by the Manchester United experience’. But the job he did at West Ham during both spells was really good and I think he’s approaching the Everton job as a manager who’s not just thinking about the next 18 months, but one who can lead Everton into this new era at the new stadium.
You can listen to full episodes of The Athletic FC Podcast for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and watch on YouTube.
(Top photo: Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
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