Only now, before the last of so many, many games at Goodison Park, is David Moyes explaining why he’s spent so little time in his own dug-out seat, which is at pitch-level, down the years.
‘You can’t see the ball on the far side of the pitch from here,’ he explains, taking up a position in that seat, in the calm of the empty stadium as a warm afternoon sunshine illuminates the pitch. ‘There’s a camber in the middle of the pitch so you can’t actually see right across the it.’
We’ve walked here through the old stadium’s narrow tunnel – up the 13 whitewashed steps to the spot where Everton players have always taken the Z-Cars tune as their cue to step out – and he remarks on its tightness; another of Goodison’s idiosyncrasies. ‘The tunnel’s so narrow that opposition players are brushing each other,’ he says. ‘It’s going to be different from now on but that was all part of making it a difficult place for other teams to be.’ That spot at the top of the tunnel is his favourite spot.
Moyes seems in no particular hurry this day: content, it appears, to linger here and take in the understated majesty of a place which has been so fundamental to his remarkable managerial career. He speaks of the privilege of being the one who, in a footballing sense, turns out the lights at Goodison on Sunday and takes Everton into a new place and new time. The sense of custodianship he seems to feel is what strikes you most.
But while this is precisely how he’d hoped today’s valedictory match against Southampton would turn out to be, it wasn’t a given, of course. Moyes is well enough acquainted with football’s cruelties and lack of sentiment to know that, after returning to Goodison in mid-January, he could have found himself presiding over the club’s relegation to the Championship, coinciding with Liverpool winning a 20th title.
‘My worry when I said I would do it was, “My goodness have you thought about this deeply enough?”’ Moyes says. ‘I’d been looking at the teams at the bottom of the league and I thought, ‘If I take this team down – if we are relegated here – it will be a disaster. Terrible.
David Moyes speaks of the privilege of taking charge of Everton’s final game at Goodison Park
Moyes has spent little time in his dugout seat at Everton and instead prowled the touchline
He returned to the club in January having previously managed Everton over an 11 year period
‘There was a swell of people saying, “We hope you come back,” which made me feel good, as well. But I was so worried that I could lose what I had here. I wouldn’t ever say that I had a legacy here but if I had anything, it could be blown up because of what I’d done in this period.’ There was more than one night when that apocalyptic prospect kept him awake, he admits.
The scale of the task only hit him after his first game back – a 1-0 Goodison defeat to Aston Villa which left Everton marooned one point and one place above the drop zone. But what then ensued – Moyes introducing attacking plans and moving the team 10 yards further up the pitch – has made his side the seventh-best performers in the Premier League since January 19th.
First time around, they sang of him: ‘He’s got red hair but we don’t care.’ Now it’s: ‘He’s got grey hair but we don’t care.’ The new one is his favourite Goodison song, he jokes.
Club legend Graeme Sharp sees an entirely different Moyes to the sometimes tense and prickly individual who walked into the place as a 38-year-old manager in March 2002. ‘The first time, he was more up and down, but he is so different now – as day is to night,’ Sharp says.’ He’s mellowed so much. He’s older, he’s learned things, had experiences at different clubs. He knows what he’s got to do and what’s there.’
With that experience has come the confidence to know when to intervene. In his first early months at Everton, he let Wayne Rooney and Thomas Gravesen get away with letting off rockets in the gym. ‘You need to decide which players need to be managed in a certain way,’ he says. I was a very young manager so there were always going to be time when I got things wrong – I still do – but at that time probably more so.’
He agrees that he is more collegiate now – confident enough to hear conflicting opinions. ‘I think as you get older, you’re always looking to see that you’re making the right choices,’ he reflects. The sheer size and complexity of the contemporary Everton – the change which most struck him most when he walked back through the door – makes that necessary.
He’s needed no re-introduction to a club he knows intimately, though. We speak the morning after he’s attended an Everton Heritage Society and awarded the Dixie Dean Award to 86-year-old Derek Temple, whose goal won Everton the 1966 FA Cup.
He only has to state one number to illustrate how this club lost all sense of value and perspective while going through 10 managers in 12 years after he’d left for Manchester United.
Moyes admits he feared taking Everton down after taking charge in a relegation battle
Everton’s 1-0 home defeat to Aston Villa in January revealed the extent of their troubles
Moyes has overseen an Everton revival to ensure the Toffees remained in the top flight
Graeme Sharp, who is pictured outside Goodison Park, believes Moyes has mellowed from his initial spell at Everton and has learned from his experiences at different clubs
‘Everton have probably spent half a billion in a period and you think about the money we spent…’ he says. ‘I think what I do best is build the clubs up if I get the opportunity and time to do so. The first time around it was about trying to grow. This time here is us trying to fix and grow again.’
Yet he does not go on to preach the mantra of prudence and parsimony which you would expect of a manager who spent just £30mllion net during his 11-and-a-half-year first Goodison spell.
‘It’s hugely different now,’ he says. ‘The game’s hugely different now. I’ve always hoped that money wasn’t going to be the most important thing in football, and I think maybe through that last era here we tried to disprove it.
‘I think unfortunately now, it’s really, “how big are your pockets and can you spend?” I never really hoped that was the way football would go. I’d always hoped that football would be – you get good players, you get a good team or a manager, unearth a few great young players. But I just think that we will have to spend more money probably. You have to do it. I don’t see it being one window here. Maybe not even two windows. We probably have to go slowly and catch up where we can.’
Moyes likes Ipswich Town’s Liam Delap, though Chelsea and Manchester United are ahead where he is concerned, and Brighton’s Evan Ferguson. Tomas Soucek, who he signed to West Ham, may come into it the summer calculations. But Chelsea’s Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Burnley’s Maxime Esteve would meet a wish to bring the squad age down. We don’t discuss transfers in this conversation.
The joyous sense Moyes exudes of being a man who has come home, comfortable in his own skin back on Merseyside, extends to having no hard feelings about West Ham’s indifference to him. The club withdrew the new contract they initially offered when he’d delivered them the Europa Conference League trophy, the season before last.
‘For me, it might have been the right time to leave anyway,’ he observes. ‘Yes, [owner] David Sullivan offered me a contract, then withdrew it, but I had a month to sit and look at it and didn’t do it because I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing for me either.’
That trophy, clinched in the night of high emotion against Fiorentina in Prague, did give him a sense of validation, he says.
Moyes has no hard feelings over how his time at West Ham ended after a contract offer was withdrawn
Delivering the Conference League trophy to West Ham provided validation, Moyes admits
Moyes believes there has been a reawakening at Everton and will look to reshape the squad
Moyes will oversee their Goodison farewell before setting about the task of helping Everton to bed into their new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock next season
‘I think to be in the game for a long time means you’ve done ok. In any line of work it can be the same,’ he reflects. ‘But it did feel different after I’d won the trophy. It felt in some ways… not that you were respected more but that you were recognised more because of it. I’d always said, ‘if I don’t win one, I’ve had a great career and really enjoyed it. But it made a real difference to me.’
The road he did chose brought him on the same drive into Everton that he took on a warm Spring evening when first appointed in 2002 – ‘it seemed like a summer’s night to me,’ he says – and saw so many kids in Everton shirts he instinctively called it ‘The People’s Club’, a nickname that stuck.
He’s felt a re-awakening there, in these past five months. ‘I see it in the people,’ he says. ‘They didn’t have much to talk about and there was a feeling of being downtrodden. They’re beginning to say, “We’re back again.”’
The challenge ahead is to maintain Everton’s momentum and begin reshaping the squad, whilst helping bed them into their new stadium. Replicating the beautiful intensity of Goodison in that far bigger place will, of itself, be some challenge. For one more day, though, he can allow himself some sentiment, amid the emotion of a farewell to Goodison.
‘I have to say that I always wanted them to redevelop Goodison and not move,’ he says. I’d tell them, “Aw, come on! Do one stand at a time!” The game’s changed though, hasn’t it? We all have to move on. I’m just the one that’s going to shut the door on the way out.’
MY FAVOURITE GOODISON MEMORIES
March 16, 2002 – Everton 2 Fulham 1
My first game as Everton manager. I’m thinking, hey, my goodness, I wonder what this is going to be like? David Unsworth scoring after just 27 seconds helped. We were in quite a bad relegation battle at that time.
Moyes oversaw a 2-1 win over Fulham on his first match as Everton manager in March 2002
April 20, 2005 – Everton 1 Man Utd 0
I list it because it was so close between us and Liverpool in the run-in and we were going to have to win one of our big games to probably have a chance of making the Champions League. Duncan Ferguson scored the goal and we finished above Liverpool.
Duncan Ferguson scored the winner against Man United to help Everton qualify for the Champions League in 2005
March 12, 2008 – Everton 2 Fiorentina 0 (lost 4-2 on penalties)
A Europa League quarter-final that stands out because of the disappointment. We’d been well beaten in Italy but totally dominated here. We were competitive, getting into Europe, and trying to give the supporters the moments they’d missed for so long.
Everton’s penalty shootout defeat to Fiorentina in the 2008 Europa League quarter-finals stands out as a disappointment
