Moyes praises his captain fantastic

Everton boss David Moyes paid tribute to his captain Phil Neville after the veteran’s brilliant showing in their 3-0 win over Wolves on Saturday.

Neville scored his first goal for three years – and only his fourth for Everton – sandwiched between strikes from Jermaine Beckford and Diniyar Bilyaletdinov to hand the visitors all three English Premier League points at Molineux.

Moyes was glowing in his praise of the 34-year-old, describing the former Manchester United player as a model professional.

“I don’t think there is enough you can say about Phil Neville which would actually sum up how good he is, not just on the pitch, but off the pitch and as a man, so anything he gets he certainly works for and deserves,” Moyes told Sky Sports.

“We have done really well today, we got our goals at important times, and they were some terrific goals.”

“Billy’s (Bilyaletdinov) was a real good goal – that is what he does for us – he scores great goals for us.”

“They started the way you would expect a side that are near the bottom of the table.”

“They want to get their crowd behind them and they started very strongly.”

“We probably got our goal against the run of play but I thought after that we had some good play and good goals, but maybe for their goalkeeper we might have scored one or two more in first half.”

Wolves boss Mick McCarthy, whose side remain second from the bottom on 32 points and one point from safety, conceded his men were playing like a team haunted by the drop but praised the fighting spirit of his men.

“We are a bottom-three team at the minute so quite clearly we are not one of the best teams in the league. But we have had great responses, as we did today for 20 minutes,” McCarthy said.

“For 20 minutes we were terrific weren?t we? We started really well. But then they scored the first goal and not us. It was their first cross in our box so hugely disappointing.”

“We almost equalised immediately and we had a bit of play. The free-kick we gave away, it was an unnecessary free-kick. And then Phil Neville, who hasn?t scored for I don?t know how many years, finds an unbelievable strike that goes through about 18 players.”

“I don?t think it made us look fragile actually, I thought we did alright. Then they got the second one and we continued to have a go.”