Moyes: My pangs at seeing Toff struggle

DAVID MOYES admits he felt a real pang of disappointment at Everton’s struggles with relegation last season.

Next summer will mark 10 years since the West Ham boss left Goodison Park to take over from Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United.

But the Merseyside club will forever be close to the Scot’s heart and so, naturally, when he sees them suffering he still feels it acutely. “Yes, it does give me a pang,” he said. “Because there have been bits of it where I look back and remember my time with Bill Kenwright.

“He used to say to me, ‘David, you have £5million a year to spend, that’s all you’ve got.’ “I used to say, ‘Fine, no problem, let’s see how we can go’, and we got a side which was competitive, tried to be in Europe, we got to an FA Cup final, we finished fourth one season…

“So if you’re looking through the time, we tried everything we possibly could on a limited budget.

“Maybe over the periods you could talk about Everton having a lot of money to spend. Maybe this year would not be the case but in the past they have. “So it shows you sometimes money isn’t always the key to everything.

“But when you do get it you have to try to spend it wisely and we’re in that situation at the moment. “We have spent well at West Ham this year and we are hoping we have spent it wisely and are trying to show we have made good signings.”

Despite his concerns for Everton last season, Moyes never felt they were going to get relegated.

He added: “I wasn’t really that concerned because I felt Everton had enough, I always felt that Everton had enough good players to get out of trouble.

“The club, what they stand for there, they’ve been in the league for so long, I always felt Everton would have enough.

“I have to say, we were all watching the game at Burnley when things went against them.

“It was tight, but I never really felt that Everton would be one of the teams that went down.”

Moyes is back at Goodison this afternoon with Frank Lampard now occupying his old seat in the home dugout.

And he knows the younger manager will have learned a lot from last season’s battles.

Moyes said: “Frank has spent most of his career playing at the top end.

“It shows you another side of football and sometimes you need to see exactly what it’s like and how to cope with it.

“You would rather not see it, but when you’re a young manager you have to expect there are going to be bad times, if you want to be in the job for a long period.

“Frank handled it well. He got through it. “They have brought in players who will give them and the team some

stability.”