Just as he was when handed the microphone after Goodison Park’s final Premier League fixture five days’ earlier, David Moyes was pitch perfect when setting the tone for his last pre-match press conference of the season to preview Everton’s trip to Newcastle United.
The Blues boss’ record speaks for itself since he returned with the team – who are now confirmed to finish 13th regardless of the scoreline at St James’ Park – enjoying a 20-point cushion between themselves and the relegation zone, unlike the precarious single-point gap that greeted him at the time of his re-appointment.
Incredibly, Moyes has finished above two of the so-called ‘Big Six’, Europa League finalists, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United, who the north London side defeated 1-0 in Bilbao.
It is the first time the Blues will end up above the Red Devils in the table since 1989/90, the season that this correspondent went to his first game at Goodison Park as a 10-year-old schoolboy.
Yet when asked about Everton’s progress since he took the reins just after the turn of the calendar year, the Scot was at pains to praise both the fanbase – he said he felt the crowd paid a huge part and not just at Goodison as on the road (there have been four Premier League away wins compared to one in Sean Dyche’s final year) – and the players themselves, insisting he’d be happy to keep them all, even if he knows in reality that significant changes in personnel are set to lie ahead.
While his predecessor would always try and pay lip service to the Blues’ supporters, one of his biggest limitations at the club was trying to harness the power of Goodison.
Rather than embracing the magnitude of this special moment in the club’s history, we were told on more than one occasion that things weren’t going to improve “just because it was the final season at the Grand Old Lady.”
For the man who started out as the Premier League’s youngest manager when he dubbed Everton “The People’s Club,” when starting out at Goodison, the respect is mutual and Moyes spoke of the club no longer being broken after despatching Southampton 2-0.
Like Dyche, who was running out of options by the final game of his first season in charge of the Blues and forced to go into the Bournemouth game without a recognised striker or any full-backs, Moyes is now shorn of both his first choice centre-back options as Everton prepare to face the Magpies.
But thankfully, the pressure is now off, even if a gaffer who always refuses to let his standards drop insists that his team still want to put on a show.