David Moyes was the youngest manager in the Premier League when he arrived fresh-faced, red-haired at Everton back in March 2002.
“Thirty-nine isn’t old anymore, and do you know something? I don’t really feel old in my job just now!” he tells Juliette Ferrington as they sit down to catch up on a hectic return to management life.
“I feel quite young. I hope I’m still bursting with energy! There’s been some brilliant managers who’ve worked a lot longer. Sir Alex [Ferguson] was older. I got a message from Sir Alex which was nice.
“I’ve had an incredible number of messages from so many of the ex-players as well. From Mikel Arteta to Brian McBride to Nikica Jelavic to Tim Howard, you name them.
“It’s been great to get messages from them. The hard part is replying to everybody at the moment.”
There isn’t too much time for pleasantries, however. Moyes has plenty to be getting on with given Everton’s precarious position in the table, just a point outside the relegation zone.
Not that Moyes is seeing himself as a firefighter manager drafted in to douse the flames.
“I don’t want to ever be thought of as a specialist in avoiding relegation,” he begins. “I’ve had to do it, unfortunately, on a couple of occasions.
“I’ve been relegated in football myself once, but I’m coming back to a club with great traditions, great history, and I want to try and get it back to where it was.”
Everton would perennially punch above their weight in Moyes’ first spell as he established a team sprinkled with stardust but built on solid foundations of working the hard yards.
Champions League qualification in 2005 as one of four European campaigns shifted the mindset towards a club that had been fighting relegation dogfights under his predecessors.
With the club moving into a state-of-the-art new stadium this summer, the feeling is that those halcyon days may not be so far away from a return.
Moyes continues: “We’ve all got great excitement about going to the new stadium, and I think we’re all really looking forward to it.
“It was something that, even in those days going back, we were talking about new sites, where could we build a new stadium. So we’re now at that point where it’s just about to happen, but we’ve got to make sure we get there as a Premier League club. We’re all aware of that.”
Barely a week into the job, you can already detect a hoarseness to Moyes’ voice.
Hours working on the training ground at Finch Farm in between media commitments and time spent on recruitment during this month has made the past 10 days a whirlwind for the Scot.
“When you’ve not been working a while, you haven’t been using your voice! I’ve been shouting and preparing so it’s taken its toll.
“I think confidence plays a big part in lots of things. We played the other night with a good element of confidence at times. We just didn’t, at the magic moments, take it and there were opportunities.
“There wasn’t a great deal in the game. But we’ve got to find that way of making that work happen in our favour. There’s enough about us to make it happen. We really want to give the crowd something to shout about.”
Evertonians have been starved in this regard.
Moyes accepts that in the short-term, the remaining games this season represents more a ‘sticking-plaster job’ to preserve the club’s top-flight status.
Everton’s problems in front of goal this season have not been helped by the form of their attacking players. Those tasked with roles higher up the pitch have scored just nine Premier League goals between them from a total of 148 shots.
Just two players (Dwight McNeil and Iliman Ndiaye) have a positive xG performance while Dominic Calvert-Lewin currently has the worst xG performance of any player in the Premier League (-3.22).
Moyes adds: “You always want to come into a job with an idea of what’s it going to look like next year, and then a year after.
“Let’s be fair, Everton have probably been in this situation for the last few years. We’ve probably felt the same, very difficult to look forward when you can really only look at the next game and how you’re going to get some points.
“Ideally, you want to prepare and start to build a team which will improve over the years. Sean [Dyche] had a really difficult period and he’d done fantastically well to steer the ship in the right direction, get them over the line when it was needed.
“He’d done a lot of good things for Everton at the time, and I have to say that I didn’t expect him to go at the time he did, but by all accounts, I think it was right for both parties.”
