Kevin McCarra interviews Everton manager David Moyes whosefanatical approach to the job is helping to restore pride at the club.

A man who wants to stay in the big time has to know his way around the backwaters. On Tuesday, David Moyes was in Widnes to watch the Everton reserves extend their bad form with a 2-0 defeat to Middlesbrough. It was a routine engagement for a manager, but he could very easily have avoided it.

The game clashed with the opening night of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Liverpool Empire, the latest production by Bill Kenwright, who is also vice-chairman and major shareholder at Everton. While Moyes is not necessarily an aficionado of Lloyd Webber's back catalogue, it might have been a convivial outing. With his team fourth in the table, he could also have looked forward to being feted by at least half of a Merseyside audience.

The interesting thing about Moyes is that he would not have made his decision out of heavy-hearted duty. His desire to weigh up Niclas Alexandersson's comeback from injury at the Halton Stadium rather than Stephen Gateley's performance is exactly the sort of choice expected of him. Moyes is the fanatic's fanatic.

Craig Brown, who followed him at Deepdale, has the perfect adjective. "David is voracious," said the Preston manager. While in charge of Scotland, Brown noticed Moyes was forever popping up at the national coaching centre in Largs. The inexhaustible curiosity ensured he was always somewhere in the background of every important occasion, as if he were the Zelig of football.

"He came to us at the 1998 World Cup," recalled Brown. "He was very concerned not to be obtrusive, but he wanted to find out how we prepared for those kinds of games."

It is customary for managers to put it about, sotto voce, that they inherited a hell of a mess when they took up their post. That is a shrewd way of begging for time. Brown, though, is full of appreciation for everything Moyes did at Preston and finds that his legacy includes a squad who are more likely to moan if the training schedule is not hard and long enough.

Moyes, the only British manager in the Premiership to hold the UEFA professional coaching licence, has a gift for implanting a trace of his own obsessiveness in others. The origin of the trait is probably impossible to uncover. Some point to the unassuaged ambition of a man whose playing career at seven clubs, leading from Celtic through Shrewsbury Town to its close at Preston, was modest, but thousands of others have laboured in the lower divisions without ever turning into such a case history of zeal.

Moyes (39), is a formidable blend of intelligence and impetus. Tomorrow's keenly anticipated derby at Anfield is awkward, with Joseph Yobo and David Unsworth suspended but, even if he cannot keep his side above Liverpool for Christmas, the prospects will remain encouraging. Good news is coalescing around him and Everton are expected to announce within the next couple of weeks that they have come up with the £30 million to give them, as anchor tenants, a 50 per cent stake in the £160 million stadium planned for the Kings Dock.

Plenty of obstacles still litter the path to that dream but Everton, these days, look more like a club who expect to clear them. While the transformation is under review, the customary descriptions of the Moyes effect since his arrival in March sound too simple to be an adequate explanation of the mighty upsurge at Goodison.

Everton have won six Premiership matches 1-0 this season and the powers of endurance are significant. People will tell you about the individual attention paid to the fitness, health, diet and even dentistry of each footballer. They go on to refer to the painstaking preparations for games and the practice sessions - morning and afternoon - that are now the norm. As the account goes on, though, you find yourself wondering if these are not just the commonsense procedures any manager might have implemented.

The difference with Moyes must lie in the fact that, so far, he has never been perfunctory, never let the regime become a tedious routine. His attitude is powered by so much energy it irradiates those around him.

If there is any long-term concern for Moyes, it must stem from the fact he seems to have no mental bolt hole in which to escape football. For the moment, though, the perpetual engagement is entirely fruitful and he does not allow himself or his players to slide away from their commitments. His outlook is redolent of American sport, about which he has read a great deal.

He has no truck with the complacent theory that a manager should "let the other team worry about us". At Bellefield, Everton spend the second part of the week on preparations that are tailored to the next opponents. Moyes is good, too, at giving a specific set of duties to each player and fans feel, for example, Unsworth is a far more effective performer than he has been for years.

There is increased use of the software that provides a complete log of individual performances in a game. The squad are relieved to be part of a firm, successful regime but the authority of Moyes' manner is so obvious that he has not needed a disciplinarian crackdown. Even without such deeds, it does not tax the mind to envisage the scene last year when this courteous manager became involved in a scuffle with two players on a pre-season trip to Austria after Preston had lost to SV Wacker Burghausen, of the German third division, and the Turkish club Kocaelispor.

To some extent, Moyes does conform to the stereotype of the hard, unrelentingly ambitious Scottish manager, but subtler qualities are also essential. Had he been unreflectingly authoritarian, Moyes would have denounced Wayne Rooney for the teenager's hand-on-hips swagger against West Brom. "It is part of Wayne's game that he plays with an air of arrogance," the manager preferred to say. He has contrived both to protect Rooney while also keeping him involved and there should be a role for the 17-year-old at Anfield.

"I've got no qualms about throwing Wayne in," said Moyes. "It'll be a challenge for all the young players - Wayne or whoever - to show they can compete in games like this regularly, that this can be the first of many. I won't change Wayne's style or temperament for the match."

While Everton were third in the Premiership, he struck the perfect note by noting it was "only okay, we can do better". This was a laconic indication he knows the prestige the club once enjoyed and expects to restore it.

With a chronic shortage of funds, Moyes could eventually find the ascent of Everton is not inexorable after all but no one has caught sight of the limitations so far.

- Guardian Service