THE last time the Everton coach headed up Tottenham Court Road before yesterday, it was ferrying the top team in the country towards the M1.

It may have still been August and Everton were then one of only a handful of clubs to have played more than one game in the early stages of the 2007-08 season. But the table doesn’t lie and Everton sat proudly on top if it.

Given the somewhat less scintillating start to this campaign, assuming that position now seems like something from a distant bygone age, and not just because it was a night when Alan Stubbs was banging in 30-yard free-kicks.

While Everton inevitably made way for the more predictable title challengers to swallow them up, the significance of that win in the first week of the season remained intact throughout their successful ejection of Tottenham from the fifth place they had occupied in the previous two seasons.

Like the 2-0 success they enjoyed at White Hart Lane a year earlier – their first in the Premier League era – it had a galvanising effect on their fortunes for the forthcoming campaign.

So it must be hoped, particularly in light of Yakubu’s season-ending injury, that yesterday’s third successive victory at Spurs does the same.

Because while it might be the first day of December, the game Everton need to turn their fortunes around, the moment their destiny finally starts to be defined, still can’t come soon enough.

And this could just be it. After all, David Moyes’s side needs a boost to their confidence more than ever given the perils that await – this month couldn’t be more fraught with danger if Rio Ferdinand was organising the Christmas party.

The fixture list looked bad enough, with Aston Villa at Goodison and a trip to Manchester City to negotiate before the visit of leaders Chelsea so it was important to get the dreadful performance at Wigan last Monday out of the system before things got much more difficult.

Doing it against Harry Redknapp’s rejuvenated team, who had only lost one of their first nine games under the new manager before yesterday, serves only to suggest that the team spirit and work ethic that has overcome so much adversity in recent times is alive and well. Which is just as well.

In the dark days of the credit crunch, with businesses folding and job losses looming large, one occupation is surely safer than any other – Everton physio.

Mick Rathbone is more likely to be applying for planning permission on an extension to his waiting room rather than bemoaning a lack of business as he somehow tries to squeeze Louis Saha in for some treatment after he became the latest addition to the injury list.

And he was only on the field to aggravate his troublesome hamstring because of the calamitous misfortune of Yakubu. Unlike Saha, the Nigerian didn’t need a stretcher to help him off the field, as the seriousness of his plight didn’t seem obvious at first.

But when the news of the extent of the injury dawned the mood surrounding the victory was, like much of the weekend football action that had gone before, lost in the fog.

It all leaves Moyes with only one fit senior striker – and probably having a rethink over last week’s comments that he’s missing his UEFA Cup commitments. Midweek excursions is the last thing this squad needs right now.

And there’s no point dreading the prospect of the Everton manager fielding a weakened side against Macclesfield Town in the FA Cup next month because at this rate he’ll have no choice.

But in evidence yesterday were elements of the Everton squad that remain unaffected by injuries and an absentee list that would shame Bash Street.

The hope that they can keep overcoming the odds is perhaps as optimistic as Victor Anichebe’s attempts to see out time by the corner flag in the first minute of six added on for stoppages at the end of yesterday’s game.

But this victory epitomises how the refusal to dwell on disappointments can make up for a lack of reinforcements. And it must be remembered that it was achieved without the contribution of Yakubu for all but the first few minutes.

His agony seemed to suggest that Everton would be tormented by more misfortune and disruption as they attempted to bounce back from that below-par setback at the JJB Stadium. But as Moyes defiantly declared in the build-up to this game: “We take defeats very badly here.”

That adverb certainly couldn’t be applied to any aspect of his side’s performance yesterday as they proved their manager to be emphatically correct.