One exhausting pre-season session brought that balance into sharp focus.
Rathbone told Football Presse, “Those first years at Everton were magical because even though times were changing and all the foreign stuff, which is great, was all coming in, the new stuff, we managed to somehow bring it in but retain the heart.
“So it was, it was a fabulous time, that kind of transition to old school to the modern stuff. It was seamless. But somehow, because of those people and David particularly, we maintained still where you can breathe and have a laugh and we're not robots.
"So it was a magical time at Everton.”
Moyes understood both sides of the game
Rathbone believes Moyes’ ability to combine different approaches was a major part of what made him effective as a manager. The Scot could be demanding, but Rathbone saw someone who cared about his players and understood the importance of personal relationships.
“He has all the right ingredients. He's an extremely nice guy. He probably wouldn't want me to say that, like, you know, he likes to be maybe, you know, tough and stern.
“Anybody who knows him as well as me, he's a fantastic guy. I won't say his bark's worse than his bite, he would hate that, but he's a fantastic guy. He cares about the players.
“The players would healthily moan about him in a good way that you want. They would do that, they would healthily moan about him, but they all knew when David's the manager, you're going to have your best years as a player under him. And everybody knew that.
“He has that blend of being a very good human being, fantastic knowledge, fantastic reader of the game, understanding of the new stuff, but knowledgeable that the big thing is to win your personal battles.”
The pre-season session that tested the players
Rathbone’s clearest illustration of that philosophy came on the final day of pre-season, when Everton’s players were completing a series of punishing runs. The club had introduced new sports science equipment, but Moyes wanted to see how his players responded when their physical limits were being tested.
“I'll tell you a great story about Dave. We just got all the new sports science stuff going and that, like, and great, it's here to stay.
“And one day it was the hardest day of pre-season, was the last day of pre-season, and we did the horseshoe runs and they were hard. And it's more or less a full lap of the pitch. You've got 60 seconds and you're running flat out. It's a really hot day. It was the dreaded last hardest run.
“Sometimes we do six, sometimes seven. Anyway, I used to do it with the players as well. We'd done six and everyone had got in, but lads were on the floor. A couple of lads had been sick. And we're on the floor, we're waiting for the dreaded one more. Anyway, we're on the floor and Moyes goes, one more.”
Heart rates against heart
The fitness coach was monitoring the players’ heart rates remotely. Seeing how high they had climbed, he came over to intervene. Rathbone remembers the exchange vividly.
“The fitness guy comes, a foreign guy, lovely fella, but he's watching it all on the telemetry 30 yards away, the heart rates and that. He comes running over, he goes, David, David, no, no, no more, too much, too much. Their heart rates are through the ceilings, you know what I mean?
“And David turned to him, he says, ‘I don't give a f*** about the heart rate stuff. I don't give a f*** about your fancy machines. I want to see the man who can wipe the sick off his chest, get on the line, and get me in one more time, because I'm going to Chelsea in two weeks' time for the first league game, and they're the guys I, I want on my team bus.’”
For Rathbone, the point was not that sports science had no value. It was that the information provided by technology could not, by itself, tell a manager everything he needed to know about a player’s determination.
“And there's a great truth in that, and it taught me a lot about the mentality of running as well. And I've done loads of runs. Nobody's ever died. Nobody's ever died in the running session we put on.
“And there's a room for sports science and there's a room for digging deep. And yeah, we accept what you're saying to the guy, we get that, but this is not about physiology, this is about heart.”
A blend of the two
Rathbone’s recollection captures what he valued about Moyes’ approach at Everton: the willingness to embrace new methods without allowing the game to lose its human element.
The sports science equipment had a place, but so did the ability to endure discomfort, compete for teammates and respond to a manager’s demands.
“So that was that day, and we saw a lot of the blending of the two. It was very cleverly done.”
Mick Rathbone is author of "The Smell of Football III: One Hundred Days in the Dug Out" from Pitch Publishing - which is available here.
