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David Moyes: Keegan is right in a lot of ways - but I'm not going to accept it

Following his team's 1-0 defeat at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday, the Everton manager, David Moyes, and his Arsenal counterpart, Arsène Wenger, had a conversation over a (non-alcoholic) drink.

They talked about how their respective seasons had gone. When he looks at Everton, Wenger told Moyes, he sees a club with "momentum".

On the pitch that momentum has stuttered in recent weeks, but Aston Villa's surprising home defeat by Wigan last weekend means that, at Goodison Park on Sunday, Everton need only a point against Newcastle United to be certain of fifth place in the Premier League and another tilt at the Uefa Cup. Applying the Kevin Keegan rule, which decrees that the top-four places are unassailable, that makes Everton hot favourites to win the so-called alternative Premier League, as best of the rest.

Moyes and his players did break into the hallowed top four, in the 2004-05 season, but since then normal service has been resumed. So does he agree with Keegan that the league is boringly predictable, dominated by a self-perpetuating Champions League elite?

"I think in a lot of ways he's right, but I don't want to believe it and I'm not going to accept it," Moyes says.

I know that he is a man of strong religious faith; does he sometimes turn to the Almighty to sustain him through a bad run of form? I get the direct blue-eyed gaze that some of his erring players must know all too well. "I don't talk about it too much, Brian, to be fair. I was brought up in a Christian family. I go to church whenever I can."

We leave it at that, but he is a man who exudes decency, which perhaps has its roots in a God-fearing upbringing. That said, at Preston and in his early days at Everton he was an uncompromising disciplinarian. He admits that he has mellowed.

Full story at The Independent.