“We had no competition but we’ve got a bit more now and a bit more belief as well.

“Everyone thought when Man City spent what they did last summer and you had Aston Villa continuing and Tottenham too, that Everton might finish at the bottom of that pile.

“But we’ve over the years kept digging away and you can’t shout about it, we’ve not got a great deal to shout about, but I think we’ve got a great team and a team which keeps going.”

Moyes added: I thought Leon Osman was our best player today. He carried the mantle today, he took it on with Mikel (Arteta) still coming back and one or two others getting back to form.

“He was the one who carried us through. I thought he played well in midweek but in the three or four games before he’d dropped a little bit.

“Over the years Ossie’s been really good for us. The likes of him and Tony Hibbert are our boys and they’ll go the distance for us because they are club players.

“I thought we played some good football. It took us a wee bit to get going but there were passages of play where we really passed the ball well.

“We have developed as a team and people like Mikel and Steven (Pienaar) have certainly helped with that. But today Ossie was probably the one who was the catalyst to our play.”