Everton have a gleaming £800m stadium but they can be the proof money isn’t everything. In a division of conspicuous consumption, they were a club who struggled to spend. With their transfer-market profit, they finished low down the spending charts. But they are now fifth in the actual table, three points off the top, after an unbeaten start.
If the question is whether that has come by accident or design, the same may be said of Thierno Barry’s winner against Ipswich. An impressive start may have come in spite of some of the powerbrokers at Hill Dickinson Stadium, but because of David Moyes. On days such as this, his virtues and values can feel timeless. His capacity to outperform relatively modest resources and galvanise relatively small squads has been proven time and again. If Everton were written off, they are scripting their own underdog story. “We have tried to turn it into a positive,” said Moyes.
