The Toffees just stick at it, refusing breathlessly to budge from their high-altitude third place, despite having a largely anonymous bunch of journeymen players and having sold the great teenage wonder Wayne Rooney to Manchester United for plenty at the start of the season.
Football isn’t supposed to be like this. Everton are basically broke, their stadium ain’t huge, they were rubbish last season and we ‘experts†like to get our predictions right.
Then along comes a coach like David Moyes. Infuriating chap. Originally billed as relegation contenders by just about everybody, penniless, starless Everton are just four points behind champions Arsenal going in to their Saturday clash against Fulham and are right up with the Gunners and leaders Chelsea, with the best away record in the league. Their only defeat in seven on the road came against the Blues at Stamford Bridge.
Incredible. After last week’s highly impressive 1-0 win at Birmingham, Moyes let his big centre half, Alan Stubbs, do the talking. A lifelong Everton fan, Stubbs grinned: ‘People are waiting for the bubble to burst. We didn’t do well last season. People are waiting for things to blow up.
‘It’s our aim to keep them waiting. We’ve just got to keep going as long as we possibly can and, at the moment, it doesn’t look like stopping.â€
‘We are hard to beat, we don’t give a lot away and we are nicking wins. If you can do that, then it’s a good recipe. We got beaten by Arsenal early doors [4-1 in their first game of the season], but we put in a good performance at Crystal Palace and it gave us the belief to go on from there.
‘Suddenly you win a couple away from home and you go into every away game thinking you can win there. It’s just a confidence thing.
‘We started off with probably the hardest game you can think of in Arsenal at home and people started writing us off and it made us even closer. The lads are as honest as the day is long and what you see is what you get and you just can’t buy that.â€
Now, with boss Moyes signing a new five-year deal which takes him through to 2009 and the board offering him £10-million to spend in the January transfer window despite record losses, things are looking up.
Moyes said: ‘My ambition is to manage a club in European competition and there is no better club to do that with than Everton.
‘There are signs the club is coming out of the dark days. It has been a really good club and now my task is to make it great again. It’s an honour to be given a second contract but I would not have signed it if I did not have reassurances that there are funds available and we are moving in the right direction.â€
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not when they flirted with relegation and financial oblivion all last season.
Okay, they’re an established old club, they have a reasonable smattering of support around the world from people who can remember their last title success (84/85 and 86/87, think Andy Gray, Neville Southall and Kevin Ratcliffe) but to most of us they’ve always been the unfashionable side of Merseyside, certainly during the Premier League era post-1992.
But now even Liverpool fans have to accept: Everton are giving the big guns a run for their money. It isn’t just a plash in the fan, or whatever you call it.
So, who is this miracle worker Moyes, the young Scot installed after a long list of worthy bosses tried and failed to revive former Goodison good times? Joe Royle, Dave Watson, Howard Kendall and that experienced reaper of Scottish titles, Walter Smith, couldn’t do it.
But along comes another Glaswegian, after a stirring four-year spell but no previous CV at modest Preston, and Everton are laughing.
They weren’t last season of course. The Moyes bubble very nearly did burst in 2002/03 as Rooney misfired and the club found themselves hovering in the relegation zone.
But Blythswood-born Moyes (42), who played for Celtic 19 times and won a Championship medal before failing to make the top grade and joining the journeymen at Cambridge, Bristol City, Shrewsbury, Dunfermline and Hamilton, has defied the critics this winter.
He was never a great player. His combined transfer fee from all those moves? A very modest £40 000, made up mostly of the £30 000 Shrewsbury shelled out to Bristol City for his workmanlike services. In all he played 519 League games both sides of the border, which ain’t that bad. But George Best he was not.
As a manager though, he has long been talked about as a future Sir Alex Ferguson.
He took his first coaching badge aged just 22, perhaps recognising that a quick brain rather than quick feet would eventually forge his footballing future. But it was much later, in 1998, when he was 34, that Moyes finally got to run a football club. He took over at Deepdale, home of Preston North End.
They were in some trouble at the time but Moyes, playing and coaching, eased them clear of the drop zone at the end of his opening season and his first full season saw them charging up the table before losing to Gillingham in the play-offs.
It was at about that time that Manchester United became interested — they wanted Moyes to replace Brian Kidd as Fergie’s assistant. But Moyes declined, and in 2000 he led Preston to the division two title and their first season in division one for two decades saw them get to within a play-off final defeat against Bolton Wanderers of reaching the top flight.
Heady stuff. All the big clubs started sniffing about — Middlesbrough, Southampton and West Ham were all linked with the man the tabloids dubbed ‘A Big Moyesâ€.
And being the shrewd Scot that he is, Moyes had a clause written in to his new five-year contract with Preston allowing him to speak to any interested Premiership clubs. When Smith finally saw the writing on the wall at Everton, Moyes was a fairly obvious choice.
He took the job in March 2002, perhaps not realising just how financially strapped the old blue half of Liverpool actually were.
Undaunted, Moyes worked the immediate miracle of avoiding relegation, winning three of his first four matches in charge.
His second season saw Manager of the Month awards, the emergence of Rooney, the possibility of the Champions League but then a late decline and they finished seventh, just behind Blackburn in the battle for Uefa Cup qualification.
Last season? Best forgotten. They managed just 39 points. Normally that would ensure relegation, but Wolves, Leeds and Leicester were so bad they couldn’t even reach the magical 40 mark.
Moyes was under huge pressure. Players were unhappy, Rooney was being linked with United, the board was falling apart.
That’s why this season’s great start is so unexpected. Moyes was supposed to be a Sir Bobby Robson, a Gary Megson, a Paul Sturrock. Give him a few games this season, a couple of bad results and, whoosh, off he goes back to Scotland, to Inverness Caledonian Thistle or Ross County or something.
But no, Moyes has worked the miracle using the energy of Great Dane Thomas Gravesen in midfield, bringing in the talent of Millwall’s young Samoan Australian Darren Cahill next to him, and filling in with journeymen like former Newcastle fullback Alessandro Pistone; Scotland defender David Weir; former Celtic star Stubbs; Irishman Kevin Kilbane, formerly of Sunderland; Lee Carsley, once of Derby. Hardly earth-shattering stars are they?
For me the keys are to be found at either end of the pitch. In goal he has former Leeds veteran Nigel Martyn, with 23 England caps and perhaps the form goalkeeper of the Premiership, a man widely admired by all except Sven Goran Eriksson, who must think, stereotypically, he’s too old at 38. On standby is another England ‘keeper, Richard Wright, offered another run in the Everton goal after a difficult time at Arsenal.
Up front, with the departure of Rooney and last season’s top scorer, Canadian international Tomasz Radzinski, he’s turned to the experience of Duncan Ferguson, the energy of Marcus Bent, the enthusiasm of Joseph Yobo.
No stars. No multimillion finds. Just hard-working men, happy to earn their considerable wages at the Premiership coalface.
Moyes is now believed to be rubbing his hands at the prospect of hunting Southampton striker James Beattie, Chelsea midfielder Scott Parker and Viking Stavanger defender Brede Hangeland in January.
But he will be aware that, just this week, the club declared £42-million debts and, so far, only the initial £10-million down payment for the sale of Rooney has come the other way.
The club could still fall apart. Stubbs admits: ‘We haven’t got a big squad and the players we’ve got here are all probably expected to play some part of the season, in the cups and in the league.
‘It will become an issue if we start losing games. It won’t become an issue when you are winning games because when you are winning you want to play in every game.
‘It all depends on whether we can keep this up and stay third. At the moment there is a massive incentive to stay there and from our performances we are rising to the challenge at the moment.
‘You don’t feel the tired legs when you are winning. When you are a football player the biggest thing you want is to have that winning feeling.â€
Too right. But I’m worried that Everton’s fairy-tale winning feeling can’t go on forever. Sadly, money matters in football these days. Expect Manchester United and arch-rivals Liverpool to sail past soon.
Anything else would be a miracle. Can’t see many of them around this weekend.
Predictions
Arsenal 3 West Brom 1
Chelsea 1 Bolton 1
Crystal Palace 4 Newcastle 5
Everton 2 Fulham 2
Manchester United 5 Charlton 0
Middlesbrough 2 Liverpool 1
Norwich 1 Southampton 3
Portsmouth 2 Manchester City 0
Blackburn 2 Birmingham 1
Aston Villa 3 Tottenham Hotspur 1