Everton manager David Moyes spoke at the Football Writers’ Association Northern Managers’ Awards Dinner where he was guest of honour

David Moyes has outlined his passion and desire to keep going at Everton as he closes in on a couple of managerial records. The Blues boss was speaking at the 44th Football Writers’ Association Northern Managers’ Awards Dinner at the Edwardian Hotel in Manchester on Sunday night where he was guest of honour.

Moyes, who has gone from being the youngest manager in the Premier League when he first took charge at Goodison Park as a 38-year-old in 2002 to the division’s elder statesman at 63, steered the Blues to nine top-eight finishes, including their highest-ever Premier League placing of fourth during his initial spell in charge, and collected a hat-trick of LMA Manager of the Year awards.

Reflecting on his previous posts, the Glaswegian outlined the importance of having support from upstairs at a football club. Moyes said: “When I first became a manager at Preston, it was an incredible opportunity for me to get into a job. But the biggest thing for me then was that I had so many good people who were working to help.

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“Bryan Gray was the owner and he was so good. I look now at the modern football and I see how difficult it is for so many of the young coaches to get three months or six months in their jobs. If you don’t have good people to look after you, it’s really difficult to have a longevity which I’m really fortunate to have. But they gave me the chance.

“They didn’t bother me. Bryan Gray used to phone me on a Sunday night and I’d be sitting watching the game and at that time, putting the kids to bed, watching the video of the game and going back from the day before. He would only come on and say: ‘How were things? How did it go? He didn’t question anything. He let me go on with it.

“He asked me if there was anything required and he let me do my job and that was so important where nowadays we find it slightly different. Where you have to be lucky sometimes with football as a coach is the people who you work for.

“My next job I went to Everton and I was really lucky that I had Sir Philip Carter and I had Bill Kenwright. Both of them were incredible. Sir Philip Carter stood up to all the noise and all the talk. Quite easily, he just pushed it aside and let me get on with the job.

“Bill Kenwright was fantastic to me personally. Over all the years, if I wasn’t in a good place, he helped me if I needed lifting, he was always there for me and sometimes as managers we need that as well as it can be an incredibly lonely job at times.

“So that part of my career was all very good. I stayed 11 years at Everton and I was always worried that I was overstaying my welcome because you know you get to that stage and if you look back, there’s only the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson, Brian Clough and Arsene Wenger who have done much longer than that.

“Maybe there are one or two others, but it was wasn’t a normal thing for managers to stay that long. Since then, I moved on, I had other jobs at Manchester United and I went to Real Sociedad.”

After his spell in San Sebastian, Moyes returned to England and having taken charge of 759 Premier League games, he is now third on the competition’s all-time list behind Arsene Wenger (828) and Sir Alex Ferguson (810), who chose him as his successor at Man United in 2013.

He said: “The main reason I wanted to go to Real Sociedad was because I wanted to see more British managers get the opportunity to manage abroad. Off the top of my head, there had been Howard Kendall, Bobby Robson, Terry Venables and John Toshack in Spain but those days felt like they had sort of gone and no British managers were getting the chance. So, the chance to go to Spain for me was a great opportunity. That was a fantastic experience for me.

“But since I’ve come back, I’ve had some other clubs, Sunderland and West Ham was a brilliant experience and obviously my last spell at West Ham, where I won a European trophy.

“I understand how important longevity is, because I think having it says something about how you do and how you work. But I’d never experienced what it felt like to be a winner and winning a European trophy because it felt like it was something different and I’d gone somewhere onto a different level.

“It made me realise that winning the trophies really means something special if you’re really fortunate to be a manager who could do that. I’m jealous of Jose Mourinho and Sir Alex, all those ones who won bundles of trophies and I wish it could be me.

“But the next best thing that I’ve got is that I’ve been fortunate enough now to be not far behind Sir Alex and Arsene Wenger in the number of Premier League games I’ve managed. From that point of view, there’s a pride in that because I don’t think you get the jobs and you don’t stay in the jobs in the Premier League that easy.

“We’ve had so many good managers come to the Premier League over the years. Great, great managers, but they don’t all stay the journey. They find it pretty difficult to be here. They either lose their job or can’t keep it going or don’t stay.”

Moyes, who returned to Goodison in January 2025, is set to overhaul Harry Catterick (592 games) for the most matches as an Everton manager when his side go to Brentford on November 23, but his current contract expires next summer. In his pre-match press conference to preview last Saturday’s trip to Arsenal, the Blues boss admitted there had been a “bit of a lull” in talks over a new deal, although both parties insist they are relaxed about the situation.

Following the close of the transfer window, in which he was left with a squad of just 18 outfield players, including solitary options in the striker, right-back and left-back positions, Moyes revealed current chairman Dan Friedkin – who has never attended a game – has also never spoken to him.

With the Texan tycoon announcing on October 9 that The Friedkin Group was looking to sell Everton less than 22 months after completing a takeover of Farhad Moshiri’s 99.5% controlling stake in the club, there are now question marks over the future.

Speaking on The Football Boardroom podcast last week, both journalist Henry Winter and former football executive Christian Purslow outlined the importance of tying the manager down to a new deal with the latter remarking: “you need to make David Moyes and his team an asset in a sale process,” and it seems as though the man himself maintains an appetite to keep going.

Moyes said: “I’m really fortunate that I’ve been given the chance to stay on. Where I am now, I wasn’t sure if my intention was to come back to any football when I came back from West Ham.

“I thought that maybe I had done my bit and won a trophy as I mentioned there. But I do think that there was always a burning ambition to come back to Everton.

“It was the one thing that I wanted to do. I didn’t really want to come back in those circumstances, but then in some ways it happened as it was the last six months at Goodison. It was also moving into a new stadium, so for me, the opportunity to do that was huge and I took it on.

“It’s been a great period for me, I have to say. Like most people, there’s some difficulties, but overall, I have to say it’s been greatly enjoyed and I’m still enjoying it.

“I hope to keep going. I don’t know if I’ll ever reach the record of Sir Alex or Arsene Wenger in the Premier League.

“I’ve managed for 1,200 games now, I never thought for one minute. I would ever get to 1,000 games, which the LMA and everybody recognise is a huge achievement for any manager to get to that point.

“So, I’ve now gone to a stage where I’m really enjoying my football. I love it being at Everton, it’s a great club and I hope it can continue, I hope we can keep moving forward.”

Also in attendance were other managers receiving prizes for getting their club promoted last season: Stuart Maynard of York City and Jimmy McNulty of Rochdale (now in charge of Stockport County), who steered their sides back into the Football League; Scouser Steven Schumacher of Bolton Wanderers, who started his playing career at Everton; plus Sergej Jakirovic of Hull City, who arrived straight from the Tigers’ 1-1 home draw with Brentford earlier that day.