THE GREATEST compliment you can pay Everton is that they outthought rather than outfought Manchester United to achieve this famous victory.

That alone shows just what great strides David Moyes’s side have been making.

In the recent past, technically limited Everton teams have tried to overcome the most successful English outfit of the modern era through a combination of blood, sweat and tears.

As recently as last season, it was a bone-crunching – hard but fair – tackle by skipper Phil Neville on Cristiano Ronaldo that galvanised Everton against his former club and helped turn around a previously ailing campaign.

Although this display was as equally committed as any from an Everton side against the Red Devils, there was not physical intimidation, just superb football to vanquish a team that had triumphed so impressively in the San Siro against AC Milan just four days earlier.

After all, a midfield quintet consisting of Diniyar Bilyaletdinov, Leon Osman, Mikel Arteta, Steven Pienaar and Landon Donovan are never going to be another ‘Dogs of War’.

But as well as having good footballing brains, Moyes’s men are showing they possess great mental character too.

Until 10 days before United’s visit, Everton hadn’t beaten one of the so-called ‘big four’ in a Premier League match since Andrew Johnson’s last-gasp winner against Arsenal at a snowy Goodison in March 2007 – but like buses, two have now come along at once.

Coming from behind to beat Manchester United is an altogether different prospect however and hot on the heels of dispatching Chelsea 2-1 after going 1-0 down to Florent Malouda’s opener, Everton recorded their first comeback win against the men from Old Trafford since a Graeme Sharp brace and Gary Lineker effort for Howard Kendall’s champions cancelled out Bryan Robson’s opener at Goodison on Boxing Day 1985.

It was fitting that Jack Rodwell, a recent graduate of Everton’s Youth Academy, should seal the win, alongside fellow youngster Dan Gosling who netted the second, considering that it’s the former teenage sensation who turned his back on the club at such a tender age who normally hogs the limelight in this fixture.

No matter how supremely gifted any one individual is they can never be bigger than the club and five-and-a-half years on from Wayne Rooney’s controversial departure to United, Moyes continues to have success blooding the kids at Goodison, proving that if you’ve got a decent enough system in place and you’re willing to give the next generation the chance then the conveyor belt of talent will carry on.

As painful as Rooney’s departure was at the time for Evertonians, the deal ultimately worked out well for all parties and it was the behaviour of their former idol on subsequent returns to Goodison that really angered those who had previously worshipped him.

Therefore, the England international’s recent interviews with his ex-club’s website in which he claimed to still ‘love’ his boyhood team and admitted to ‘overreacting’ in the past suggested that Rooney was now offering Everton something of an olive branch.

This was backed up on the eve of the game by Moyes, who revealed that the Manchester United striker had contacted him a year ago to apologise for criticism of his former manager in an autobiography.