DAVID MOYES reasoned last week that even if he could only manage to get 18 to 20 games out of Louis Saha it would be 18 to 20 games he would stand a better chance of winning.

But perhaps it’s only 18 to 20 minutes that the Frenchman needs to make a crucial difference given the quickfire nature of his impact – not just on individual matches but to the shape of this season as a whole.

A week after a late cameo that showed little sentiment for former employers Fulham, Saha broke more stubborn London resistance with a devastating two-minute spell that inspired Everton to a most unlikely victory.

If you’d bet your house on them winning them 3-1 with eight minutes of Saturday’s game to go, you’d have been evicted swifter than Jonathan Ross from the TV and radio schedules.

But then Saha’s excellently drilled cross for Joleon Lescott exposed West Ham’s defensive vulnerability and the former Manchester United forward then stepped in with a double strike that sealed a third consecutive victory for Moyes’s men and continued their recent renaissance.

The previous two victories of the current run had coincided with their first two clean sheets of the campaign, and although they fell behind to Jack Collison’s superb opener, their new-found defensive confidence prevented it from being much worse.

Compared to the Hammers, Everton have started the season like George Graham’s Arsenal. Gianfranco Zola has inherited a defence whose confidence is sapping by the week – Liverpool were the last visitors to the Boleyn Ground that they prevented from scoring, way back in January.

But credit has to go for Everton for the way they capitalised on that uncertainty and edginess to the full. The stadium was already emptying even at 1-0 – those punters must have sensed what was to come – but the Everton fans certainly didn’t and they will have been as surprised as anyone that they were not only outcheering the home fans by the end, they were probably outnumbering them as well.

Yet closer analysis suggests it is not perhaps as shocking a comeback as it first seems.

Make no mistake, Everton were second best for most of this game and it was only in those dramatic late stages that they finally found some rhythm and shape to their attacking play. It was also the spell that contained their only serious efforts on target in the entire game.