Moyes: Tip-top Everton can scale heights again

Jul 26 2007 by Nick Smith, Liverpool Daily Post

DOMINEERING ski slopes and Hollywood hills could hardly have provided a better backdrop for David Moyes here in America.

A week into the tour, the stunning Salt Lake scenery followed by the sweeping bright lights of Los Angeles have served as poignant reminders of the heights he wants his Everton side to scale this year – and how hard they will have to work to get there.

“We’ve got to be prepared to climb the mountain again,” reflects Moyes, firmly planted on ground level in his LA hotel.

“We did it last year and we need to do it this year – keep ourselves as high up it as we possibly can.

“So when we leave here we have to be in tip-top condition, not only physically but mentally as well.”

It’s little wonder then that Moyes, with more than two weeks to go before the Premier League season kicks off, is already thinking about that table – something managers are famous for denying they do even when the campaign reaches the business end.

Being isolated and alone with your thoughts is the norm for a touring football manager and with the possibilities of a whole new Premier League season stretching out across the horizon like a Santa Monica sunset, it has to be difficult not to let the mind wander ahead into that 38-game maelstrom.

While the airport-hotel-training ground treadmill leaves little time for the players to do much in the California sun except sweat themselves silly on the training pitch, at least their camaraderie helps lessen the boredom when the working rota relents.

However, there’s only ever one manager with his own mind. So it’s no surprise Moyes sees the mental preparation as the key to deeming whether a pre-season is successful or not.

It’s why he homed in on the men who enabled LA’s most famous footballing resident (up until last week anyway) to take his team to the semi-finals of the World Cup.

Jurgen Klinsmann might not exactly have had a hands-on approach to his country’s preparation from his Hollywood home, but he used it to transform Germany from dismal Euro 2004 failures to world contenders on their own soil before a narrow and thrilling semi-final defeat to eventual winners Italy.

The answer lies in the bowels of LA Galaxy’s Home Depot Center where, buried beneath the impressive arena and David Beckham-decorated club shop is a less glamorous yet just as effective masterplan.

It’s in the offices of Athletes Performance, a company that formulates peak fitness programmes, just as they did for Klinsmann when he was planning world domination.

And Moyes has taken advantage of their proximity to his LA training base by enlisting their coaches to take over his sessions at brief intervals and give the routines a new and different edge.

And it’s an edge that Moyes feels his players just didn’t have during the friendly defeat to Real Salt Lake on Saturday in a disappointing conclusion to the first energy-sapping leg of the tour.

“What we’ve been doing out here is the norm for us and it’s what we do every pre-season – but we have introduced the people who worked with the German squad to get better,” said Moyes.

“They have been training very well and we are pleased with what we are seeing so we will be better when we get back.

“We didn’t play particularly well in the game but that’s why you have pre-season, and it’s given us a chance to reinforce what we do.

“So hopefully the players will get their edge back now and realise what’s required.

“I think the game was used as a friendly but we trained in the morning as well, so while we treated it as important it wasn’t as big an issue as making sure we get the players in the condition we want.

“Those conditions were really tough for them and we hope the benefit of playing at altitude and in that heat, in time, will help us and benefit us throughout the year.

“We didn’t feel that way at the game because we didn’t think we did well enough but that’s what happens in football.”

For all the on-field work on this 10-day tour, however, you get the impression that if Moyes can haul his troops to a triumphant ascent of the mountain like he did last year, there will only be one word on the flag he will be planting at the summit – teamwork.

That’s the one guaranteed thing he hasn’t had to hire Americans, or anyone else for that matter, to assist with.

“The team bonding is already in place and there’s a great team spirit amongst the players,” he added.

“Phil Jagielka has only just joined but he looks as if he has been here all the time and that’s important.

“But we hope we can keep that going because, when we need it, we have to play as a team throughout the season.”