David Moyes delighted with Seamus Coleman as Everton battle to victory over Fulham

EPL : Seamus Coleman, Everton v Fulham

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David Moyes has praised his players after Everton held on to beat Fulham 2-1 at Goodison Park.

The Toffees went two goals up soon after half time with goals from Seamus Coleman and Louis Saha putting the hosts in what seemed to be a comfortable position, but the introduction of Bobby Zamora from the Cottagers bench caused problems for the Goodison outfit, who conceded to a fine Clint Dempsey strike with half an hour remaining.

However, Moyes’ side held firm to deny the West Londoners, moving up to the 40-point mark, seen by many as the target required to avoid relegation.

Speaking to ESPN after the win, the former Preston boss said: “We let them back into the game, we got 2-0 up and I don’t know if we came off the gas or ran out of a little bit of energy in that part of the game or if Fulham actually upped it.

“When they got the goal it was tough – they had a lot of the ball and we had to dig in but with the players we’ve got out we had to grind a result out today and we knew that was going to be the situation and the players have done that.”

Coleman gave his side the lead with a fine headed effort and the Toffees boss was delighted with the young Irishman’s performance.

He said: “Seamus great today for us, he’s been a little bit up and down recently but he got a goal and he’s created one or two other things for us. 

“He’s a young boy as far as football terms go, he’s not long out of the Irish league and it’s his first full season in the Premier League so I think we’ve got to give him a lot of credit for how well he’s doing just now.”

Everton have been struggling with injuries in recent weeks and they were dealt a further blow when Louis Saha went off with that appeared to be an ankle knock as the game neared its end, though Moyes admitted that he wasn’t sure of extent of the injury.

He said: “I don’t know what the injury was, when he went down he signalled just before that on his hamstrings so I don’t know if he’s done something different from his hamstrings but we were just getting Jermaine Beckford ready to change him anyway.”

When questioned whether European football was an aim for the club this season, the Scot insisted that survival from the Premier League was still his primary concern, despite now sitting in 8th with only eight games left to play.

He said: “We’ll keep looking up now, I think when you get 40 points you can start to think you’ve done the job behind you but it might not be this year, you might need more than 40 points so we want to try and keep winning. 

“We see ourselves as a club who have finished in the top regions over the last few years so we want to try and maintain that.”