CLASS, like Everton’s magnificent team spirit, is something that Manchester City have found you just can’t buy.

David Moyes is still rankled by the way in which Saturday’s opponents conducted themselves over Joleon Lescott’s controversial transfer from Goodison Park last summer.

Managers’ programme notes usually make pretty tame reading but ahead of this match, Moyes declared: “There is no doubt that Manchester City Football Club treated us with little respect and broke the rules in the summer transfer of Joleon Lescott.

“I found it very difficult to accept that a club that until recently had so many similarities to Everton should suddenly start acting with no class.”

Even before the kick-off, you could tell this was going to be a sizzling encounter with the home crowd rocking and once the action started, it was obvious that Everton’s players were well up for putting a club who Daily Post ‘Blue Watch’ columnist Mark O’Brien aptly described as ‘Scratchcard Lottery Millionaires’ firmly back in their place.

Despite what the Scot might say publicly in casting doubt over whether such matters were playing on his steely-determined players’ minds, all those inside ‘The Grand Old Lady’ could see that for everyone connected with Everton Football Club – this was personal.

It’s always difficult to be popular when you’re nouveau riche and this is something that ‘Citeh’, once affectionately regarded as the ‘big on heart, small on quality’ genuine Mancunian equivalent to their all-conquering local rivals, have found.

But while United’s wealth comes on the back of years of calculated planning and empire-building through shrewd leadership, it’s merely the filthy lucre of black gold that funds the Eastlands outfit’s rise in prominence.

And outside of Old Trafford, where Sir Alex Ferguson wants to shut up his “noisy neighbours”, there’s arguably nobody more irked by the behaviour of football’s ‘Beverley Hillbillies’ than those who fill Goodison on a regular basis.

Detractors might point to Everton as being stuffy aristocrats of the game, babbling on about their rich heritage from their once-great but now antiquated castle at Goodison while casting a jealous eye at the newly-found wealth of their opponents.

But it’s not like City are even self-made men. Everything they’ve got – including their plush stadium built for the Commonwealth Games which must be a particularly sore point for Evertonians – has been handed to them on a plate and has absolutely nothing to do with their own achievements, or more accurately, lack of them.

Of course, in the past, Everton – formerly dubbed the Merseyside Millionaires during Sir John Moores’s stewardship – have benefited from a wealthy benefactor but the Littlewoods chief always tried to adopt a professional approach to running a major football club.

At least the unfortunate Johnny Carey was told face-to-face when Moores decided to dispense with his services as Everton manager in a taxi cab unlike Mark Hughes who was made aware of his fate after a win over Sunderland last month with former Inter coach Roberto Mancini already waiting to step in.

The suave Italian gentleman does at least seem something of an oasis of dignity within the United Arab Emirates-funded desert of crassness at his new employers though and he provided a rare moment of class for City at Goodison when he showed up his faltering players by effortlessly trapping a ball which, heading out for a throw-in, approached him at great speed.

Few Evertonians will have shed any tears over their former terrace favourite Hughes though following the aforementioned pursuit of Lescott last summer that, unlike Mancini’s silky scarf and silky touches, showed all the grace of an elephant in steel toecap boots.

Although forced upon Everton like another high-profile defection down the M62 in 2004, the former Wolves man’s departure is now looking like an even better piece of business for the selling club and his former adoring public chanted: “Lescott, what’s the score?”

After hardly missing a game for Moyes during the three best seasons of his career at Goodison Park, the pain of both the defeat and the surgery on his fragile knees which forced him to miss the fixture will at least be numbed by the huge pay packet which helped convince the England defender to turn his back on the club who made him a household name.

Subtlety may not be City’s forte either on or off the field – Micah Richard’s pulling of Louis Saha’s jersey wasn’t very clever – but that, along with team spirit, was what won the game for Everton. Another peach of a goal from Steven Pienaar set them on their way, and the South African was even canny enough to get away with celebrating in front of the visiting supporters by a celebration which included having a little kiss with a burly steward.

Marouane Fellaini’s pirouette to make Craig Bellamy look foolish couldn’t have happened to a nicer man while skipper Phil Neville even managed to dazzle Robinho with some trickery.

It was the performance of the season so far from Moyes’s men and undoubtedly will be one of their most enjoyed wins.

Whatever happens to these respective sides for the remainder of the campaign, Everton will rightly regard this – and it could have easily been a four-or-five goal margin – as a huge moral victory.