David Moyes Returns to Deepdale: A Journey of Learning for Young Coaches

David Moyes heads back to Deepdale on Wednesday night insisting Preston North End remains one of the best finishing schools for ambitious young coaches.

The Everton manager, now 63, takes his current side into a Carabao Cup second-round tie at the club where he truly began his journey in the dugout, and he made no attempt to hide what the place still means to him.

"It was a brilliant job for me," Moyes said of taking over from Gary Peters in January 1998, his first step into management. "I would be recommending it to all the young coaches."

For Moyes, Deepdale was never just a first job. It was a proving ground. A place where a rookie manager could make mistakes, learn quickly and build a career away from the glare that engulfs bigger clubs.

"You are better off to earning your stripes and finding a way through the leagues than being thrown in at a club where it is difficult at the start," he said, underlining his belief that the Championship and lower leagues still offer the best education for emerging managers.

Those early years at Preston were shaped not only by results and promotion pushes, but by quiet Friday conversations with one of English football’s greats.

Moyes lit up when he recalled his time with Sir Tom Finney, the North End icon who scored 171 goals in 372 appearances between 1946 and 1960.

"He used to come in and have a cup of tea with me on a Friday before a game in the early days," Moyes said. "He was legendary and he still is. He was the pillar of how I see Preston."

The chats were not just polite nods to history. Moyes mined Finney for detail, especially on the art that made him famous.

"The biggest thing I used to ask him about was him being renowned for beating players and he would say: 'Well, they would over-cover one side and I would just take them on the other side'.

Moyes never saw Finney play live — "Obviously I didn't see him play, I was too young," he admitted — but the grainy footage he has watched only deepened his appreciation.

"I've seen a few clips and he was a big thing for Preston."

On Wednesday, Moyes walks back into a stadium where his managerial career caught fire and where the stories of Finney still hang in the air. This time, though, he arrives as the seasoned Premier League boss others now look to for guidance, just as he once looked across a teacup at a club legend.