Everton: ‘Aggression, energy, desire’ – how David Moyes is motivating Toffees, again

I played more than 200 Premier League games under Moyes. The way he asks you to play can be an enjoyable style, but it is also a very demanding one.

Against Spurs, I thought some Everton players had harder roles than others.

Jesper Lindstrom, in particular, was almost asked to do two jobs on the right – a winger when they had possession, a right-back without it – but that freed up Iliman Ndiaye to stay higher up the pitch on the left, which certainly benefited Everton in the final third.

If you are going to play regularly for Moyes, that’s exactly what you have to do. Like Lindstrom, I found out pretty quickly that some days you will just have to dig in and work hard in games and you won’t get any of the individual plaudits.

That’s the way it should be, though. Under Moyes we were at our best when everyone bought into his approach and believed in the end product that the team was striving for.

He was brilliant at getting us up for a game, whoever the opposition were. He’d get the tactical information across, wind us up and send us out – we’d be in the tunnel yelling ‘let’s go’.

Part of that confidence comes through hard work on the training ground and the time you spend together as a squad, building together.

Moyes has only just taken charge, so that process is only just beginning, but there is another area where he has a head start, which is understanding Goodison Park.

He has managed more Premier League games there than any other Everton manager so he understands what the crowd are like, what they expect and what they respond to, and also in which moments they can help the team the best.

If you come out of the traps fast, aggressively press the opposition and force them into making mistakes then the crowd react to that. That’s exactly what happened against Spurs, and it brought more out of the players.

Everton won the tactical battle early on, but they also over-ran Tottenham. It was only when they tired towards the end that Spurs were able to find any momentum.