JAMES BEATTIE hasn't really picked a great week to criticise David Moyes.

The Everton manager's stock is as high as it's ever been, so the Sheffield United striker really should have just made all the right noises about how he got on with the Everton fans and then left it at that.

He couldn't resist though, and had to say something about how he was frozen out and the manager clearly didn't fancy him.

The fact was though, he got more cracks of the whip than Calamity Jane.

Moyes, if anything, was too willing to give Beattie chances to redeem himself and get his confidence back up when there were better options in the shape of either of Everton's two teenage terrors or even James McFadden.

Ultimately though, the Everton chief had to cut his losses and face the fact that, last season especially, watching Beattie lumbering about in a blue shirt often felt almost cruel, a kin to watching one of those bears dressed in a waistcoat and a silly hat doing circus tricks in an RSPCA advert.

Still, most Evertonians will want him to do well in Sheffield, and indeed he scored on his debut, but there seems little chance that they will be ruing his departure any time soon.

It would be difficult, for instance, to have imagined Beattie in the side that performed so admirably at White Hart Lane.

Victor Anichebe might not have had the most productive game with the ball, losing possession too easily at times, but he did his utmost to compensate with his workrate and pressurisation of the home side's defence.

Add that to his goal against Wigan and that represents adecent contribution from such a young and inexperienced player.

The whole team were fantastic though, and as the manager remarked earlier in the week, even if you've got money, it's difficult to find players good enough to go straight into the Everton first eleven.

That's not to say we won't be ecstatic if we sign Manuel Fernandes and Aiyegbini Yakubu, but Martin Jol has already proven that simply going out and spending almost indiscriminately is no sure-fire recipe for success.

The Dutchman gave the Tottenham money tree a good old shake in the summer and added a lot of players to his squad, but how many of those new recruits are better than the players he already had?

Is Darren Bent, for instance, any better than Jermain Defoe? Granted, Spurs might now be able to field stronger teams in the cup competitions and cope better with injuries than they did before, but what they gain in numbers they may lose in continuity and cohesion.

You only had to look at an Everton team that have been slowly developing together over time to see what a certain amount of patience - enforced by a lack of funds, it has to be said - can bring to a side.

Everton were organised, composed and intelligent in everything they did.

They defended magnificently but apart from the spell in the first half that preceded the equaliser, it was never anything like the backs-to-the-wall stuff we witnessed at, say, the Emirates last season.

In the shape of Mikel Arteta, Andy Johnson and particularly Leon Osman, they had players further up the pitch who could relieve the pressure when required and who, in all truth, might have made the score all the more emphatic by the finish.

It's obviously far too early to even talk about what the rest of the season might bring, but the portents are quite clearly positive after witnessing something of a master class in how to go and take three points away from home.