Summary Everton are currently experiencing a crisis, with little support from fans and a lack of talented players to inspire victories. David Moyes understood the importance of hard work and built successful teams around that principle during his time at Everton. Steven Pienaar was a cult hero at the club and formed a legendary partnership with Leighton Baines, embodying the hard-working ethos of Moyes' teams.
Everton are a club in crisis at the moment, with the fans having very little to feed off, and in turn the team seldom receiving the backing, especially at home, to spur them on to victory.
Whilst many will argue it is a two-way street, and that the players must give the Goodison Park crowd something to cheer about, there are few players really capable of achieving such a feat, whether that be due to a lack of technical quality or just a lack of ingenuity.
In the end, all Evertonians crave is some hard work, with a high press and a few tough tackles often enough to cultivate a fine atmosphere.
David Moyes was one of few managers who truly understood this, and as such built his teams around such an image. The Toffees under the Scotsman were solid and hard to beat, built from a deprived financial backing and turned into an outfit that embodied the club's image.
He would employ midfielders with enough combative steel to overraw opposition, but with a touch of class that could see them sweep them aside too. Wingers would seek to do the same, supplying hulking frontmen who would batter home goalscoring opportunities.
Few exemplify the quintessential hard-working Moyes wideman more than Steven Pienaar, who achieved cult-hero status on Merseyside across two successful spells.
How good was Steven Pienaar?
Having joined from Borussia Dortmund back in 2007, initially on loan but with a pre-agreed permanent fee of just $4m (£3.4m), it took little time for the diminutive trickster to acclimatise to life in a new country.
After all, his tenure in Germany had been tough, with the South African never really feeling accepted at his previous club.
Whilst that would swiftly change under the former Preston North End manager, the 41-year-old was hardly famed for the phenomenal figures he would post throughout each season. Especially given his debut year would see him record just eight Premier League goal contributions, following that up with a further ten the following year.
Instead, what he offered was a near-telepathic connection with his full-back, as he and Leighton Baines struck up a legendary partnership that Moyes would outline: "In the end, this partnership between Steven Pienaar and Leighton Baines will be very hard to improve on. Their ability to find each other with the ball, they wanted to play and combine together, their combination play down the left was exceptional.
"We found that we always wanted Pienaar to lock on and encourage the full back to follow him in. If the full back chose not to come, we were happy for the combination between Baines and Pienaar to get on the ball. Quite often we sucked a full back out, and as I said earlier these two had an incredible ability to get the ball back to each other."
Their presence typified an era that, whilst unsurprisingly devoid of silverware, actually had the fans excited to come to Goodison Park knowing full well that their support would be justified by the relentless performances on the pitch.
To justify just how highly these supporters value hard work, Pienaar even won the 2010 Player of the Year award following a campaign in which he had scored just four league goals.
However, despite how revered the left midfielder remains, he does not even come close to another star who the current West Ham United boss reportedly came close to signing back in the day.
Admittedly, there are few wingers who can compare with a prime Eden Hazard.
Did Everton nearly sign Eden Hazard?
Back in 2012, Moyes would detail exactly how they missed out on the Belgian wizard, who rocketed to stardom after his summer move to Chelsea for a mouth-watering £32m fee.
The 60-year-old simply noted: "We knew all about Hazard because of Marouane Fellaini and the Belgium boys. But it was always going to be biggish cash for us – and we’ve had a few like that, I can tell you!"
For comparison, during the summer in which the current free agent signed, the Toffees would only spend a total of €21.65m (£18.7m), bringing in the likes of John Stones, Kevin Mirallas and Pienaar, who had returned after a failed move to Tottenham Hotspur.
It is fair to say that Hazard would eclipse the latter two with ease.
How good was Eden Hazard?
To emphasise just how much better the former Real Madrid superstar was than Everton's South African ace, his final year in England saw him post 21 goals and assist a further 17 across all competitions.
Meanwhile, Pienaar would only score 22 and assist 40 across his entire career in the Premier League, spanning eight and a half years.
2018/19
37
16
15
2017/18
34
12
4
2016/17
36
16
5
2015/16
31
4
4
2014/15
38
14
10
2013/14
35
14
9
2012/13
34
9
14
All stats via Transfermarkt
This should come as no surprise though, with Hazard naturally bound to have reached the elite levels given the £150m paid to tempt his Stamford Bridge exit. He had reached the pinnacle of world football, and a step up to the biggest club in the game made natural sense after he had nearly won it all with the Blues.
After all, early on in his time there, writer George Sessions had already suggested the future was bright, noting: "Eden Hazard is a bit special. He started this season quite slowly but is turning into a world beater for Chelsea. Huge potential."
Chelsea fan Frank Khalid then sought to remind the masses of a talent that was lost to injuries upon that fateful transfer to Madrid: "Just a reminder to everyone what Eden Hazard could do, I’m really fed up with the constant negative things said about Eden Hazard. He will always be a Chelsea legend".
The 126-cap maestro departed west London having scored 110 goals, assisting a further 92 across 352 appearances in England, and will likely go down as one of the most exciting stars the Premier League has ever seen. Few in history can compete with that, let alone the workmanlike, technically inferior Pienaar.
Whether he would have thrived in Moyes' work ethic-dependant system remains to be seen, but with talents like the 32-year-old, it is always worth making allowances. After all, his managers at Chelsea always did, and they would perennially reap the rewards of his efforts.
Had he moved to Merseyside instead of the English capital, perhaps it could have been them whom he propelled towards the apex of English football, with his ability certainly impressive enough to have done so.
