Moyes – per the Daily Mail – said: “I have said many times I think the manager’s job is to try raise the expectations at football clubs, then you start to say to everybody that you have to calm these expectations down.

‘So I don’t think anybody should get too ahead of themselves because the truth is two years ago we were avoiding relegation.

‘We have got to watch that is not boom and bust here.

‘We have got to make sure we get ourselves a continued strategy which keeps continuing to build the club, to get a consistency amongst the group.

‘As we know the Premier League changes so quickly and the quality of the teams is so high.

‘The improvement from last season has stepped up. We sort of made a concerted effort (on the coaching staff) to see if we could go to another level with them, to see if we could challenge them to go further.

‘As last season moved on, we found that we were competing with the top teams and getting closer and we finished by qualifying for Europe.

‘So the real challenge that players have got now is to see if we can maintain that and build on it.

‘At the moment I think you would say that after 10 games it looks OK. I think after 20 might be a real good time to say, “are we really in there?”

Manager Moyes  says his team’s surge up the table has come as a welcome surprise

He said: ‘But I think our squad will need to improve as we go on, there is no doubt about that.

‘We need to keep adding – but I know lots of clubs are trying to do that and it doesn’t always work.

‘At the moment I think the players we brought in have made a difference and complement the boys we have got.

‘So it has been a great team effort by all of the players to get us to this position, but the challenge now is can we keep it going?

‘My job is to keep driving that from inside and giving the players the energy which is required to not let them in any way think they have reached their peak.’