David Moyes on Everton return: ‘It was too big an opportunity to turn down — I want to show I can go again’
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David Moyes was reminiscing about arriving at Everton. Not this time, but 23 years ago, before he had won a European trophy or earned an OBE, when he was management’s rising star, lured from Preston North End. “I had to walk into a dressing room with Paul Gascoigne, Duncan Ferguson, David Ginola and Tommy Gravesen. With me being a young coach, I said, ‘they won’t even know who I am’,” he smiled.
He need not have such fears now. “People know me a bit more,” he added. Moyes has been gone for the best part of 12 years but returned to a club with many a familiar face; behind the scenes, in his squad, in captain Seamus Coleman, even in the media room. “Too many old faces,” Moyes said. “Mine included.” He has more wrinkles than when he first walked into Everton, the scars of more than 1,000 games in management, but more experience too. He is appointed in part to be the David Moyes of old, but he is an older David Moyes. “I am not coming back to the same Everton as I left but I don’t think Everton are getting the same David Moyes,” he outlined.
The circumstances have changed in some respects, not in others. As he did in 2002, Moyes has inherited a battle against the drop. “Huge pressure,” he said. Especially for one with Everton in his heart. When Howard Kendall returned for a second spell, leaving Manchester City, he said that was a love affair but Everton a marriage. Moyes concurs. “I had a brilliant time at West Ham,” he added. “But we’ve always had a special relationship with Everton. This is a different beast to me than other clubs.”
It was the only club job he would take. “I believe so because I don’t think there is anything else,” he said. “I always thought if the job came up, it was too big an opportunity to turn down. I want to show I can go again.”
It did come up; after Moyes had considered retirement. “I thought about it lots of times, because I think it’s a young man’s game,” he said but, the youngest manager in the division when first at Everton, he is now the oldest. “Longevity,” he mused. “There’s a lot of brilliant managers who have come through the Premier League and a lot of them don’t stay that long.”
And Moyes stands third in the all-time list, behind only Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson. Some 427 of his 697 top-flight matches came with Everton. He wasn’t expecting any more this season. He didn’t realise there could be a change at the helm until getting a call last week. His conversations with Dan Friedkin and Marc Watts from new owners The Friedkin Group were to the point. “The moment they came on, they were saying: ‘We want you in the job.’ They weren’t saying it was an interview, put it that way,” said Moyes. “They were a bit stunned this happened so quickly.” He spoke to his predecessor on Sunday. Sean Dyche is a friend, a man who had shocked the owners by telling them he felt his time was up. Moyes was quick to praise a man who twice dodged the drop during times of adversity. “I have to admire him for keeping the team going because there were a few really difficult points,” he said.
But while eight managers had taken charge since Moyes left, he never abandoned hope he could return. “I always had a hope and inkling that someone would get me back,” he said. “I wanted to come back. I’ve come close on three, maybe four, occasions.”
Especially in 2019, when the sudden availability of a serial Champions League winner altered former owner Farhad Moshiri’s thinking. “Carlo [Ancelotti] coming in was the closest,” Moyes said. “I had agreed with Farhad and Bill [Kenwright, the late chairman] that I was going to be the manager and then Carlo got sacked that night [at Napoli]. They changed their mind the next morning.” So Moyes went to West Ham a couple of weeks later.
There was another sliding-doors moment in Moyes’ history with Everton. He has told the tale before of how, in the final weeks of his contract in 2013, Ferguson called him up, invited him to his house and told him he would be the new manager of Manchester United. But if not, would Moyes have remained at Everton? “I absolutely would have stayed but I was here 11 years,” he said. “It was very good but I felt I did not want to overstay my welcome and I think the time was right for me to move and for Everton to move on as well.”
If United wasn’t right for Moyes, Everton came to miss him; his stability and constancy, his bargain-hunting and capacity to drag a team through difficult times. And he missed Goodison Park. Much as he wanted to return to watch a match, he didn’t, simply because he felt his presence in the stands would put pressure on whoever was the manager at the time. But there was an invitation for him and his father, David senior, to attend a game before the end of the season, before Goodison staged its last match. Now they will be there, but with Moyes himself in the dugout. “My family were so embedded in Everton,” he said. My kids were young, my dad was drinking with all the boys in the street. Leaving was terrible.”
Now Everton’s new ground at Bramley-Moore Dock offers part of its motivation. “I’ve just got to make sure that when we walk out of Goodison and lock the door for the final time, we can all walk down to the new stadium in the right position,” he said. “There is a stadium that looks the business, it looks elite so we need to start getting some elite players,” he said. That was a statement of intent from a man who recognises the first task is simply to keep the club up. But it was in 2002, and that led to much, much more.
“I think I left a brilliant team with great characters,” he said. “The It took me a bit of time to build that but most years here, we made a bit of progress. We didn’t have huge money and not got huge money now. Near enough by the end of the time, I don’t know if we had hit a glass ceiling. We couldn’t get much further because we were finishing sixth or seventh.” Everton, more accustomed to 16th or 17th recently, would happily settle for that now. Moshiri’s ambition was too often expensive and incoherent. TFG may go about things a different way. “I think the owners might help use me as someone they can bounce ideas off,” said Moyes.
A sounding board knows how to build a club. He has built more than one. “At Everton I can remember a team challenging the top teams, trying to be in Europe,” he said. “I did it quite quickly here and West Ham. My idea is to do it quickly, I am not going to be here for 11 years like I was before.” Moyes has always taken a long-term approach. He is nevertheless a man in a hurry; his second spell will be shorter than his first – and if not, he will still be Everton manager at 73. “I won’t overstay my welcome this time. I don’t think I’ll be here for 11 years,” he said.
He is back where he was. And in the grand arc of Moyes’ body of work, that is fitting. Perhaps getting the Manchester United job wasn’t the culmination of it after all. Maybe a return to Everton was. “I think it is what I need to do again,” he explained. “I think if people probably looked at David Moyes’ career, I think they would probably think ‘Everton’.”
