Source: Liverpool_Echo
David Prentice: Everton FC v Manchester United
EVERTON took part in their 5,000th first team football match on Saturday. For David Moyes, however, there was an even more significant milestone.[LNB]For the first time on his watch Everton took on Manchester United at their own game - and won.[LNB]Sure, the benchmark by which all successful sides must be judged have been beaten by a David Moyes team before.[LNB]But only on a night when Everton suppressed United's flair, pressed, closed and defended for their lives, then hit the visitors with a set-piece counter-attack.[LNB]Not on Saturday. Not in front of an increasingly impressed Goodison crowd.[LNB]Everton watched Manchester United start well, exert some superiority and land an early blow - then they borrowed a phrase from Muhammad Ali.[LNB]They muttered: 'That the best you got sucker?' and shook up the Premier League world.[LNB]Most post-match analysis focused on United's deficiencies.[LNB]But happily more and more are waking up to the excellent football team which is hatching at Goodison Park.[LNB]The Blues swept the champions aside with a classy display of passing football. The yellow cards they picked up were either for trivial misdemeanours or Howard Webb's willingness to appease the red-faced ogre in the away team dug-out.[LNB]And what was even more compelling - more so than the way in which the absence of stellar players like Marouane Fellaini, Tim Cahill and Phil Jagielka was overcome - was the fact that this was not an isolated triumph.[LNB]Fearsome, formidable February is suddenly becoming fabulous.[LNB]To win well once against a 'big-four' side might be an accident. Twice, a coincidence. But three elegantly crafted victories in less than a month against opposition as expensively assembled and ambitious as Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City - and almost Arsenal, too - suggests something may, finally, be stirring again at Goodison Park.[LNB]We've been here once or twice before since 1987 of course.[LNB]But certainly not as often as we'd like. The make-up of modern football means that without sudden injections of cash, any assault on the higher reaches of the Premier League has to be a patient process.[LNB]But quietly, stealthily, unheralded almost, Everton have claimed back-to-back fifth-placed finishes and an FA Cup final appearance.[LNB]All that's been missing have been victories over the most difficult to beat teams. Now Blues fans have celebrated two in a week.
