Everton boss David Moyes on winning manager of the month, facing former club West Ham and Jarrad Branthwaite not getting called-up for England
Finch Farm, Liverpool, UK
Finch Farm, Liverpool, UK
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00:00Good afternoon everyone, welcome to our pre-match press conference to preview our game against West Ham. We'll start off with Vinnie from Sky.
00:07David, congratulations on the Manager of the Month award. What does that mean to you given the position the club was in when you came back?
00:12I was absolutely thrilled I've got to say, but it's the sort of thing that you certainly pass on to the players and to the rest of the staff who have done a great job.
00:21Players especially, when you consider where they were a month or so ago, to where they are and how they're feeling, how they're playing, their confidence, so it's great for them as well.
00:33Luckily I'm the one who gets recognised for it, but a lot of that praise must go to the players and the staff who are helping me.
00:41I make it that only Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger have won more Managers of the Month awards than yourself. You're level now with Pep Guardiola. What do you read into that or take from that if anything?
00:53I'm smiling at it because I'm thinking two of the names you've mentioned are absolutely huge managers in their own right. They've all been big, big winners. I've not been in that situation, but I've had longevity, I've had teams for a long time and thankfully I've won a few Managers of the Month awards.
01:16Do you feel like a big winner at the moment because of the way things have turned around?
01:20I feel as if coming back to Everton has been great for me. It's made me feel so much better and I'm back on it again and enjoying the work. For lots of reasons it's worked out well and obviously the thing that pleases me more has been how well the players have done, the players have performed so well.
01:39You've spoken before about visiting the new stadium. I'm wondering if you go into this international break on 36 points, do you then think now's the time for me to go and pay it a visit and have a good look round?
01:50Not yet, I don't think. I think you'll need to wait to a guaranteed safety and I don't think it would be maybe on that points total. Maybe it will, I don't know depending on the games, but I don't think so.
02:02I think for lots of reasons I want to wait and make sure. I would hate the thought that we would be in the Championship in a new stadium. I want us to be known as a Premier League club, having a great new stadium to go to and the supporters looking forward to that.
02:20We now know that there is change with Kevin Thelwell leaving. What impact does that have on your planning for the future now as well? How is it going to work exactly, Angus Kinnear coming in as CEO? Will it be almost similar to how you worked with Bill Kenwright?
02:34Well, I don't know all the answers to that at the moment Vinnie, but I do know that unfortunately Kevin will be leaving his job. He's done a great job here over many, many years and I have to say through some really difficult periods at the club here in the last few years and making sure that they could stay as a Premier League club.
02:53So lots of admiration for the work he's done, but yeah there's going to be a change and all those bits are still getting pieced together at the moment. I've had one short conversation with Angus, that was all because he has his job to do at Leeds and I don't want to disrupt him while he's working there.
03:10So we're getting things together, we're starting to plan, but obviously again league position and the league you're in is all important.
03:17Is the booker responsibility for player recruitment something that you would like and would welcome in your role?
03:22I think nowadays you need lots of help with player recruitment. You need lots of people around you to help that. I don't think it's like the old days where I used to be popping into Wigan to watch Leighton Baines play for Wigan on the way home or going to watch Phil Jagielka at Sheffield United or something.
03:40I think it's a much more difficult area to be on your own and you need lots of advice from your scouts and recruitment department. But we've not quite pulled it all together yet, but we're planning it and getting things moving.
03:59In terms of players' futures, is it a similar situation to visiting the stadium?
04:05I think if you're a player you would totally understand that the club needs to see the position, what league they're going to be in. I think also because the players will understand fully where the club has been over the last few years as well, it's been difficult probably to get things done quicker.
04:20But we're nearly there, we're getting close to being a Premier League club. We're much, much closer than we were when we first came in. So we want to be positive, we want to think going forward and behind the scenes I'm certainly beginning to plan that way.
04:36Not included in the England squad, are you surprised at that? What would you make of Thomas Tugel's decision?
04:43Well, I don't pick the England squad, so I can only say if you're looking at the last six or seven weeks, Jarrod Bransley would be up there playing as well as any English centre-half in the country at this moment in time, that's for sure.
04:54But the big thing he needs to do, he needs to go and play for England under-21s and be the best player again and then he gets selected again for the big team. So that's the instructions I'd be giving him, go and show what you can do for the under-21s and Lee Carsley will pass good information back to the manager and hopefully it will get you back in the big squad.
05:17Do you have that conversation with him, does he need picking up?
05:21He doesn't need picking up because he's a young centre-half at the moment. If you think centre-halves, a lot of them play and go on for a long time, so he's very early at the stage of his career, even to be a full international he is that.
05:34So, you've got to learn your trade, you've got to keep working at it, keep improving and I told him, go and play really well for the under-21s and show Thomas that he should have taken you into the squad.
05:47How do you feel facing West Ham, is it similar to the first time you faced Everton after you'd left?
05:52Yeah, but there's a lot of differences now. I'd faced Everton with Manchester United and other clubs as well, so it is different because I left a club that I really, really enjoyed and had a great time with everybody at the club.
06:10The times we had after winning the European trophy and coming back to see what the East End of London was like was fantastic.
06:19And to be fair, I've not brought all the players into West Ham but the bulk of them probably were on my watch really and I've got a lot of really close bonds with the players there.
06:29So, it'll be great to see them all but a really difficult situation to be coming up against them.
06:34Points-wise as well, obviously a win makes a big difference in terms of that league positioning given the relative positions of the two sides.
06:42Yeah, it's difficult from that point of view. I think we'll both be hoping that maybe the points we've got could be enough but I think we'll both be more aware that we want to improve, we want to get better, we want to get more points and so I have to go and beat West Ham.
07:00Breuer, the one potential back this week?
07:03Yeah, he's in and around it. It's a bit like Youssef and Sheamus, they've had another five or six days training whereas Brogia's just back in amongst it so just getting closer but hopefully we'll be able to get him on the bench for tomorrow's game.
07:22Thanks Vinny, we'll go to Fraser at Premier League Productions.
07:25Just developing on that point from facing West Ham and you mentioned all the players that you brought in there, does that make it an easier job for you in terms of deciding what you're going to do and preparing your players because you know so many of those players so well?
07:38No, absolutely not because I know what they're all capable of and I know what they can do so from that point of view I think in many ways it makes it more difficult and they also know quite a lot about me as well, the players, so from that point of view.
07:52But look, Everton's where I work and it's where we're getting good results at the moment and my plan's to try and get another good result.
08:02I was looking at an interview that Jack Harrison was doing the other day and he mentioned about the way that he likes your management style in the sense that you're very detail-oriented and you give the players a very clear idea of exactly what their roles and positions are. Can you give us an idea of how that works from your perspective?
08:21Sometimes you do things you don't really know how you do it yourself. We all go to work and sometimes people don't know how that works so sometimes I just come in and do my work and get on with it but I have to say that we've tried to give the players a much more positive feeling in that we would like to try and score more goals, create more chances, more risk to a level.
08:48Our risk difficulty is that when you're maybe dealing with the bottom of the league it's hard to be too risky in some ways. We might be in a position coming soon but we might be able to say you can take as many risks as you like because of your league position, we're not at that point yet.
09:05So getting the results, as I've said many times and I'm praising them again, Sean Dyche put a lot of good things into the club here and I'm fortunate that I'm able to pick up on them.
09:17Thanks Fraser, we'll go to Julia.
09:21There'll be a lot of debate going on now over Jarrod Brantway but James Tarkovsky, given Everton there's only three other sides in the Premier League with more clean sheets, James has had a lot of input into that, he also scores, he scored a very key goal in the derby. Do you think it's a shame he isn't talked about for England?
09:40It's a good point, I think England have got an incredibly good group of players to choose from, the level of players they've got in this country actually makes me sick because I'm Scottish and we would like something like that but it's an incredibly good pool of players.
09:59I think Tarky's played really well and you're right, I mean obviously Jordan gets selected, I think if I'm looking back and thinking maybe the levels we've been playing at would not be something where England managers come in looking for the players that are probably at the bottom end of the league too much, that might be a thought in it.
10:20So that gives us incentive but we've all got to get ourselves up and start challenging for Europe and hopefully getting more players noticed but you're right by mentioning Tarky, Tarky's played really, really well.
10:32Jake O'Brien selected for the Republic of Ireland, I know you've changed his position, he's been in that right back, I just wondered how you assessed his development since you've come in and is there a plan to transition him next season to centre-back?
10:44Yes in some ways there is, I still think he plays a little bit like a young player but I think he's got so many good attributes and let's be fair we put him in the team, in fact Baines played him against Peterborough I think in the first game before I came in and he'd done really well and we thought well why not?
11:02I think it would be good if he goes away, he might play centre-half for the Republic, he might play right back, I'm not sure we'll play him. As I said we've tried to use him a little bit of hybrid which I'm hoping when he does eventually go back to being a centre-half then it's pretty neutral for him.
11:20But yeah I can see the next year or so him obviously going back to being more of a centre-half than a full-back.
11:26You've obviously got some players in and around the squad that have been out for quite some time, do you think the previous week at Wolves it started to show maybe the lack of numbers in your squad because as players are getting tired you look to your bench and you don't have that much?
11:41We've got a couple back who I mentioned had only trained, so for example Seamus couldn't have probably played. If I needed him to come on for 10 minutes or so I wouldn't have had to worry because we were still trying to see how he would go with his injury.
11:58Yusuf I'm still getting to know really and he's come back from a long time out. Brogia we've just mentioned is on his way back as well but it's where they are regarding match practice and getting some minutes.
12:12But they're coming back but the other three who we might talk about, the likes of Billy, Dom and Dwight, they're all making progress and you've got to say once we play this game there's the best part of two weeks, the more than two weeks break, which might start to see them all coming very close to returning. Maybe not quite right away but certainly much closer.
12:37What do you use this break for then? Is it a rest period, is it help for those players that have been injured or is it a chance for in here for you to try things out and move people about a bit?
12:49Well there's a little bit of both. The players have now been probably at it since 1st July roughly, not having much time off really. There'll be teams who have had much more games than us, than we've had this season.
13:03But I'll give the players some time off but I'll also be working them and trying to prepare them for what's coming because we have a really difficult month in April. So us getting ourselves in good shape, players right, players fit, will give us a better chance of getting points in those games.
13:20Thanks Julian. We'll go to Phil at the Press Association.
13:28Hi there. I was wondering how pleasing it was in particular to see Jack Harrison and Jesper Lindstrom combine last week, a day on from you saying, because you had that in the press coverage, we need more assists, we need more goals.
13:39Yeah, it was really important for us as well because the goal played a big part. It gave us a goal which we desperately needed because we didn't look on the night as if we were scoring that many. We had a couple of chances but not enough.
13:53But I do think that Jack's beginning to find a little bit of form, Jesper as well. We still want more, we still want more assists from them both and we need more goals from them. So that's what we're looking for. The two of them have undoubtedly got qualities and we need them to show it, especially in the coming months.