David Moyes: Arteta has the right blend of graft and craft

Nov 26 2007 by Chris Beesley, Liverpool Daily Post

Mikel Arteta (158)

EVERTON manager David Moyes believes Mikel Arteta’s fusion of continental style and grace with typically ‘British’ work-rate is making the Spanish midfielder a force to be reckoned with.

The play-maker inspired Everton to their biggest win in 11 years since Southampton were thrashed by the same scoreline at Goodison in November 1996 and although Moyes admits he is probably more demanding on the player than the average fan who can sit back and enjoy his sparkling play, he believes Arteta has now added an extra dimension to his game.

He said: “I’m demanding on Mikel but I said to him today I think he’s a fantastic talent but the one thing that makes me think that he’s better is that he’s getting a little bit of a British mentality in regards to work-rate.

“I said to him if he wants to keep reaching the standards he’s hit then part of it is that he does that for us.

“I thought in the first 45 minutes for us he was a magician – fantastic. For periods we played him on the left, for periods we played him on the right and there was actually a period when he came into the middle and Ossie (Leon Osman) went on the right so that gives us flexi-bility and they’re smashing players.”

Moyes also believes that the fluidity he has at his disposal in midfield is also a key factor to Everton’s upturn in results in recent weeks.

Since Tim Cahill returned from injury, Moyes as reverted to a five-man midfield in which Lee Carsley provides the holding role while the more attack-minded Cahill, Mikel Arteta, Leon Osman and Steven Pienaar interchange in front of him. Moyes said: “The fluidity is important. Against Metalist we changed things three times between Pienaar, Arteta and Osman being wide and in the middle of the park.

“We’ve been able to change if we think there are weaknesses in the opposition or we need someone in there for a moment or someone is causing us a problem. Tim can play amongst them and I mentioned about a year ago that he could play as a striker and I think a few thought ‘I don’t know about that’ but he’s got the goals that strikers get.

Although Everton are adopting a 4-5-1 formation, Moyes argues that this is not necessarily a defensive tactic and is backed up by the fact that with 26 goals so far this season his side are now the second top scorers in the Premier League behind Arsenal.

He said: “I think the players know that we’ve got Arteta, Pienaar, Osman and Cahill so we’ve got a lot of attacking options.

“The game was quite open and there were one or two moments when it was end-to-end.

“I think we’ve become a little bit more attacking but I’m trying to make it better, getting away from being a bit stiff and grinding out results.

“Sometimes folk think that the way you play means you can’t score goals but we’ve scored a lot of goals playing the way we have done.”