Moyes grabs underdog tag for FA Cup semi-final

Everton boss David Moyes immediately installed Liverpool as favourites to make the FA Cup final after his side beat Sunderland on Tuesday.

Moyes played down his team’s prospects for the Wembley showdown on April 14 even though Everton comfortably overcame Sunderland in their quarter-final thanks to a strike midway through the first half from Nikica Jelavic and an own goal after the break from David Vaughan.

But he believes facing Merseyside rivals Liverpool in the semi-final will be a different prospect all together.

“Liverpool will be favourites – they have beaten us twice this year haven’t they so they have to go into the game as favourites but we will go there and play,” Moyes said.

“But sometimes being underdogs can help. I think there will be times in games where you are expected to play and maybe tonight the expectancy went on to Sunderland a little bit.

“It maybe flipped a bit from the other game. That can happen but the players looked experienced tonight and there were some really top performances and we needed that.

“I am just so thrilled that we have won that game tonight because it was a really big game for Everton as it was for Sunderland and with Sunderland having got a result at our place it made them favourites for the replay so the players had to play well.”

Moyes also sang the praises of Croatian striker Jelavic, who not only put his team on course for Wembley but then played a key role in Vaughan’s own-goal.

“Nikica played very well,” Moyes said. “He is hungry and he looks like a centre-forward and we have missed that.

“I think the boys like the way he plays, they like his style and him and Darron Gibson and Steven Pienaar and Landon Donovan gave us a really big boost in January and we have been able to pick up a bit from that.”

Sunderland boss Martin O’Neill was withering in his criticism of his players’ efforts after they were thoroughly outplayed on their own turf.

“There were high expectations having done so well to get here but it doesn’t matter whether you are home or away you have to be able to perform,” O’Neill said.

“You have to be able to pass it, you have to be able to control it, you have to be able to do those things under pressure and we didn’t do it well enough. We had opportunities to play but when we did play we didn’t play well enough.

“The cup run was great and we should have been able to have continued it, particularly having home advantage and that is disappointing and I am very disappointed myself but the players since December have done very well indeed.”