SOCCER ANGLES:With the Manchester clubs out, Everton are targeting a place in the FA Cup semi-finals, writes MICHAEL WALKER

Ten years ago today, Everton went to Middlesbrough in the FA Cup sixth round having required a replay against Crewe Alexandra to get there. Four days earlier in the league, Everton had lost 1-0 to West Ham to leave them with one win in 13 matches. Everton were under pressure; by the interval at the Riverside stadium they were three down. Walter Smith’s time at Goodison Park was up.

That same weekend Preston North End beat Rotherham United 2-1 to lie seventh in what we know now as the Championship.

Preston’s 38-year-old manager was David Moyes and 10 years ago next Wednesday, he was appointed manager of Everton.

“I am joining the people’s football club,” Moyes said.

It was an unforgettable remark on Merseyside.

A decade on, the man of the people’s club will approach Wednesday’s anniversary with a derby against Liverpool on Tuesday night.

In March 2002 the Reds were a still-rising force under Gerard Houllier, about to finish second to Manchester United in the Premier League. Just one of the marks of Moyes’s longevity at Goodison is that he has shaken hands with Rafa Benitez, Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish as well as Houllier.

Ten years in a post in the Premier League is an achievement in itself – there have been eight Chelsea managers in the Moyes decade – but it is the pound-for-pound value that Moyes has delivered at Goodison Park that will make so many appreciate him over the coming days. Moyes did not buy Wayne Rooney; he had to sell Wayne Rooney.

It is why Moyes’s peers have voted him manager of the year three times in that period. Value, degree of difficulty – those are presumably the reasons why other managers went for Moyes in 2005, when Jose Mourinho had just stormed to the title with Chelsea.

In his third full season then, Moyes had led Everton to fourth in the Premier League and Champions League qualification. That Villarreal were drawn out in the pre-group stage will always be seen as a dubious landmark at Goodison. Villarreal won 4-2 on aggregate and began a march to the semi-finals. Moyes has recalled that he knew Villarreal would be the hardest possible draw when he saw Mikel Arteta with his head in his hands in the canteen.

Marcos Senna, Juan Riquelme and Diego Forlan would drive Villarreal almost to the final in Paris. Everton had earned their bite with a team built on David Weir, Lee Carsley, Kevin Kilbane and Tim Cahill.

Arsenal had begun that 2004-05 Everton season with a 4-1 thumping of the hosts at Goodison. Arsenal had Bergkamp and Henry up front; Everton had Kevin Campbell and James McFadden, who was replaced by Marcus Bent.

When reaching the 2009 FA Cup final, Cahill had Joleon Lescott beside him, while Phil Jagielka is another player Moyes would buy from the Championship and mould into a Premier League figure.

But Everton lost at Wembley, 2-1 to Chelsea. After Villarreal, it’s another what-if and for all the praise that will envelop Moyes these few days, there will be critics, mainly in Evertonian blue, who find the near-miss stuff hard to swallow.

Their argument is not just that buys such as Per Kroldrup matter almost as much Jagielka, but that Moyes is tactically inflexible. They argue that, like Smith before him, Moyes’s caution has inhibited the team more than twice. They worry about those hesitant starts to the season and the tough run-in to this season – Tottenham today, followed by Liverpool, Arsenal and a visit to Swansea.

In between there is Sunderland at home in the FA Cup. Everton are favourites to win that and this is a semi-final year without the two Manchester clubs. There is an opportunity for Moyes to cap 10 years with a trophy.

Yet imagine a Sunderland victory. Then the frustration buried this weekend – another planned protest march by fans disillusioned at the running of the club has been cancelled – would pour forth once more. Everton’s relative poverty, the absence of a new stadium . . . these issues would return.

It is said these are reasons for Moyes to think of leaving, and along the way he must have wondered. But they have been there ever since Moyes walked in the door. It could be argued that they have been there ever since the repercussions of the Heysel disaster in 1985 ate into the European potential of the great Howard Kendall team.

Moyes has acknowledged this. Everton may never fully recover. The club lost momentum it cannot regain.

On a day like today it is worth remembering that, and that in the decade before Moyes arrived, Everton finished in the Premier League’s top 10 once. In the nine seasons since, they have been in the top 10 seven times. It could be eight out of 10 by May. Which is probably the mark Moyes has earned at Everton.

Hapless Leno makes it easy for Messi the master

SORRY ABOUT this, but Lionel Messi’s claim to be the greatest footballer of all time would surely have been enhanced if he had been playing for the opposition on Wednesday night, not Barcelona.

Had Messi scored five for Bayer Leverkusen – or two or three – and led them to a historic victory at the Camp Nou, then the idea that he has surpassed Diego Maradona or Pele would have stronger appeal.

But no, Messi was part of a general dismantling of Leverkusen, one that was cringing to watch at times. Whatever Bayer had to defeat Bayern Munich 2-0 four days earlier, they left on the pitch in Germany.

Special mention must be made of 20-year-old goalkeeper Bernd Leno, who let in seven, four of which he should have saved. Leno now has an unwanted lifelong role in football history and one hopes it does not harm him.

The Man Who Let In Five Against Messi will be part of Leno’s life from here, and he might well ask his defenders to explain their role when he is asked about it.

A different question, one that should always be asked of victors, is: “What did you beat?” Barcelona’s honest answer on Wednesday should have been “not too much”.

But the nature of the “contest” should concern Uefa, not Barca. Under Pep Guardiola Barca are reinventing the game, developing it at pace. At the same time, it might be argued that elsewhere standards are dropping. That can be seen in Leverkusen’s dire performance and even in the easy manner in which Paul Scholes and Robbie Keane returned to Premier League action.

Messi merits all the acclaim he has received, but it should have arrived before Wednesday. He’d done in enough in club football long before Bayer Leverkusen and their invisible keeper failed to show up.