Will David Moyes' mind games help Everton or Liverpool to fourth spot?

The fight for fourth place in the Premier League this season looks like going down to the wire, with Merseyside rivals Liverpool and Everton currently going blow for blow for the final Champions League place. The pressure is mounting as the season draws to a close, and as of this week the sides are tied on the same number of points after the same number of games. The difference in the teams is that Everton have got to this point through steady, consistent progress, whereas Liverpool have been devastatingly good in patches and poor in others.

With the stakes so high at this stage, the managers would be looking to benefit from any advantage they can scramble, and Everton manager David Moyes has turned up the heat on Liverpool by claiming the Reds should finish fourth this season rather than the Toffees. Taking his cue from past masters of mind games, Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho, the Everton boss told the media: "We are doing everything we can to make a fight of it but Liverpool have to be favourites still. We have been consistent but for them fourth would be expected. The bookies are right to make them favourites.” By doing this it would seem Moyes is trying to take the pressure off his over-achieving squad and place it on to his rivals.

If there was a good time to go for mind games tactics like this against Liverpool, it would seem to be now – off the field the Anfield side are a mess. Their American owners are deeply unpopular with the fans, seem to have a very poor working relationship with their manager and are currently in takeover negotiations with DIC Venture Capital. Not only that, but captain and talisman Steven Gerrard recently acknowledged in the press that their performance in the league this season has been unacceptable and that, with the players at their disposal, Liverpool should have been challenging for the title. You can’t help but think all of this can’t be doing much for morale at such a critical point in the campaign

Despite all of this, Moyes’ mind games seems to have backfired and rather than hurting the Reds, Liverpool are now in a rich vein of form that doesn’t look like ending any time soon. After the fantastic 2-0 over Italian champions and league leaders Inter Milan, Benitez’s men handed West Ham a 4-0 thrashing and put three past hapless Newcastle United. No doubt there are plenty of other reasons for Liverpool’s improvement, but I’m sure David Moyes’ comments will only have strengthened resolve at Anfield.

On current form it seems to me that vital fourth place and the accompanying Champions League qualification is going to Liverpool. They have more strength and depth in their squad than Everton and would be better able to cope with injuries at this point in the season. Vitally, they seem to have the momentum and with Gerrard and Torres playing as well as they are, the outcome seems almost inevitable.

Perhaps, most importantly, all the off-field turmoil doesn’t seem to be affecting the players at the moment. The one thing currently going in Everton’s favour is their consistency. Liverpool always seem capable of self destructing and failing to overcome weaker teams (I’m sure the memory of that afternoon against Barnsley has not faded yet). This has been their Achilles heal for the past decade and the reason the title has eluded them for so long.

I believe Moyes will be proved right in the end, and Liverpool will gain fourth place. However, this just adds up to a disappointing season for the Reds, one in which so much more was expected. With the huge amount of money Rafa Benitez spent in the summer Liverpool should have been title contenders, so to be scrapping for fourth at this stage is a huge disappointment.

Compare this to Everton, who should be over the moon with their efforts and look back with pride on the way they have performed in 2007-08.