Football: Moyes Matalan men prove real bargain battlers

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Dec 16, 2007 | by MICHAEL CALVIN

THERE'S intelligent life outside the Big Four, Fabio, but not as you know it.

The scufflers of the Premier League are not sprinkled with stardust, or sugar coated with celebrity.

They do pragmatism, not poetry. Organisation rather than inspiration.

West Ham simply yearn for stability, a season without a script stolen from a tacky soap opera.

Everton, the last gatecrashers into the Champions League club in 2005, are quietly aiming higher.

The Goodison board has bucked the trend, backed its judgement, and invested nearly six years in David Moyes.

His directors have not grown bored, and fallen at the feet of a foreign suitor, like the Shirley Valentines of Soho Square.

As a result, only Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger have survived longer in the piranha tank of Premier League management.

At 44, Moyes (below) is deliberate, driven. He learned his trade on the shop floor, with Preston, in an age when being British was not necessarily a bad career move.

He's repaying the patience in his potential. Unbeaten in 12 games, Everton have conceded only four goals in 17 hours and five minutes of football.

They're sixth, a team built in Moyes' image. Intelligent, by inclination, but confrontational, when required.

They're Matalan United, terminally unfashionable, but terrific value for money.

They feed off a sense of injustice and assumed inferiority.

As Moyes said: "People said we couldn't finish fourth two years ago. When we did it was a fluke, a blip. That's the sort of fighting talk I enjoy."

He has assembled a mixture of bargain signings, academy products, and occasional luxury buys.

West Ham had chances to spoil the stats, but Dean Ashton chose to challenge Capello's faith in a traditional centre forward.

He was wasteful, his lack of match fitness as obvious as a schoolboy's shaving rash. West Ham were duly trampled underfoot, by a runaway Yak.

At pounds 11.5m Yakubu is hardly an impulse buy. Moyes kept his nerve as he settled in.

At his best, he holds the ball up, brings others into play, and sniffs out goals with the relish of a pig seeking truffles.

"Feed the Yak and he will score," sang the travelling fans. His 11th goal of the season provided the finishing touch to a move that featured Leon Osman, Mikel Arteta and Tim Cahill.

Osman has started 100 League games without generating the recognition he deserves. Arteta is the most under-rated of the Tapas Tendency within the English game. As influential, in his way, as Cesc Fabregas at Arsenal and Xabi Alonso at Liverpool, As for Cahill, well, eat your heart out Fat Frankie Lampard. Enterprise, and endeavour, without the ego.

Goals are coming from all areas - 12 players have found the net this season.

Everton will never commit Capello's cardinal sin, and fail to get the best out of themselves.