Everton’s David Moyes, now the Premier League’s oldest manager, is preparing to face Brighton & Hove Albion’s Fabian Hurzeler, the top flight’s youngest boss
David Moyes has gone from being the Premier League’s youngest manager when he first took charge of Everton to the oldest now and the returning Blues boss will be looking to utilise that experience when he goes head-to-head with the baby of top flight bosses, Fabian Hurzeler of Brighton & Hove Albion.
Almost 23 years have gone by since the Scot was first appointed at Goodison Park and following his first win back, 3-2 against Tottenham Hotspur last Sunday, he quipped: “They were singing that song about me having red hair – it’s now grey hair – I don’t know if that works!”
As the elder statesman of current Premier League managers, the 61-year-old, born on April 25, 1963, is almost three decades the senior of Seagulls gaffer Fabian Hurzeler, who was born on February 26, 1993. Curiously, it’s almost the same age gap between Moyes and the oldest Premier League manager when he first started, Newcastle United’s Bobby Robson, who was 30 years older than him, having been born on February 18, 1933.
READ MORE: David Moyes has already done something Sean Dyche failed to do as Everton undroppable emergesREAD MORE: Everton set for financial game changer as Real Madrid decision pays off
When speaking exclusively to this correspondent for an article to mark the 20th anniversary of his appointment, the Glaswegian revealed how some post-match remarks from the veteran Magpies boss served to spur him on as he looked to establish himself in the upper echelons of the English game. Moyes told the ECHO: “I remember the following week after the 2-1 win over Fulham in my first match, we were 3-0 up at Derby and it ended 4-3 to us but then we lost 6-2 at Newcastle.
“Bobby Robson was the manager and I remember him coming out and saying: ‘That result is a welcome to the Premier League for David Moyes’. When I heard that I thought: ‘Oh… you’ve got me now, the challenge is on’.
“Sir Bobby was a great man and a great manager but for a young coach it was like: ‘You think you’re doing okay, you’re going to find this tough’, and he was right in what he said.
“In the end we stayed up quite comfortably without it being too big an issue.”
When Moyes first arrived at Everton’s then training base Bellefield, at 38 he was little older than some of the senior players. He immediately had to deal with big egos and reputations but set about changing the dynamic within the dressing room.
Moyes said: “It was very difficult for a young manager. I’d had a bit of experience of managing Preston and I’d been offered quite a few jobs and other things had been happening with clubs interested in me but when it came up, the Everton job was too hard to turn down.
“I remember Paul Gascoigne was still at Everton and so was David Ginola. Then we had Tommy Gravesen and Duncan Ferguson, so many superstars. There were other really top players like Davy Weir and Alan Stubbs, who were really good Everton players.
“So it was really difficult for a young coach but I had to get started straight away and the first thing I had to do was to make sure that we didn’t get relegated. We were able to keep the team up and that gave us the platform to start and build.
“I was keen to get a new, young, hungry group of players to join to add to what we already had and that was the philosophy of how I wanted to do it. I wanted them to know what Everton stood for in terms of their work ethic and what the supporters demanded.
“I think it fitted me at the time and we tried to bring in players who also fitted that model.”
