“So it was a tremendous effort to still take the game to Wigan and get our noses in front.”For much of the game, this was not much of an advert for either manager and neither side found much of a rhythm. The only genuine chance of the first half came when Davies got a return touch from Matt Jansen and forced a low save from Mike Pollitt.There was no instant improvement after the break, with the nearest thing to a knockout blow coming when Wigan’s Reto Ziegler accidentally flattened an assistant referee.Then, after 63 minutes, Bolton got the goal they had begun to threaten. “A tremendous distraction,” he called it before the match but at least as far as the England position is concerned, it is not speculation he seems unduly keen to kill off.After the game, his mind was firmly on Bolton’s situation, with injuries to Khalilou Fadiga and Kevin Davies adding to his immediate worries.”We’ve not got 11 fit professionals for Arsenal next week, but I always said it might catch up with us,” he said of a squad heavily depleted by injury and African Nations’ Cup duty and not appreciably strengthened during the transfer window. In Allardyce’s case, you can add the job at Rangers and the one he really wants, with England. Honours finished even between Lancashire’s two unlikely candidates for a Champions’ League place and between two managers popularly supposed to be destined for bigger things.

Stelios Giannakopoulos’ goal for Bolton was equalised by Andreas Johansson during a second half that was a marked improvement on a turgid first, although both sides have played a good deal better and done a good deal more for their managers’ reputations this season.
Sam Allardyce and Paul Jewell, as the two most conspicuously over-achieving managers in the Premiership, have inevitably been linked this week with the vacancy at its most under-achieving club, Newcastle United. “We had a very tough start in terms of playing all the top teams – and we knew that all along Now we’re catching up again.”. Samaras headed Joey Barton’s corner on to the roof of Richard Wright’s net, before Kiki Musampa was presented with a shooting opportunity from the edge of the area. This time, Wright, making his 50th Premiership appearance for the home side, was able to make a comfortable save.Given their respective starts to the season – City were second while Everton were bottom at one stage – the Merseyside club can be much the happier of the two with their respective mid-table positions.”After the season we’ve had we’re just pleased to be moving away from the wrong end of the table,” Moyes said. This time it was Dunne’s looping defensive header that caused the danger. Playing against his former club and booked late on, it was not one of the centre-half’s better afternoons at the home of his former club.City’s best spell came in the final 20 minutes.

Samaras, the £6m Greek forward making his full debut, looked rather taken aback by such an aggressive form of defending.Everton began the second half in similar style to the first by hitting the top of the crossbar. Mikel Arteta’s corner was only partially cleared by Dunne and his header rebounded off Weir’s thigh and bobbled over the line. Goal of the season material it was not, but Everton were hardly bothered.They continued to press and their wholehearted, team- oriented approach was summed up by the sight of Alan Stubbs pursuing Georgios Samaras well into the City half before dispossessing him and immediately shooting at goal from 30 yards. As early as the second minute, Leon Osman picked up possession in space on the halfway line and beat the back-pedalling Richard Dunne before shooting from 20 yards and grazing the crossbar.The only goal of the game arrived within eight minutes. “We restricted them to very few chances and as for our goal, it doesn’t matter how they go in!”Everton had begun energetically. They just about deserved it, because City did not look like a side challenging for a top-six finish.

Though they rallied in the latter stages, for too long Joey Barton was given precious little support in the middle of the field, where Phil Neville and Tim Cahill had things largely their own way.
City’s frustration was evident in the final minutes when Stephen Jordan was dismissed for his second yellow card, after a reckless lunge at Tony Hibbert.”It was a big game to win,” Moyes, the Everton manager, said. It was by no means the comprehensive victory it threatened to be in the early stages, but eventually David Weir’s first goal of the season – not that he knew a great deal about it at the time – proved enough for another win. But in the six weeks since losing the Merseyside derby David Moyes’s team have all but doubled their tally. In extending their unbeaten run in all competitions to nine games by beating Manchester City yesterday, they moved to within a point of both their opponents and a place in the top half of the table. As recently as late December, Everton were fourth from bottom of the Premiership with only 17 points to their name. Then again, the pre-match huddle patented at Parkhead and performed by Alan Shearer and his team-mates for the first time yesterday has also been copied down the road at Sunderland.