Moyes praises Cahill winner

Cahill, who has missed long spells this season recovering from a broken metatarsal, scored his sixth goal in nine games to keep Everton's European adventure alive.

And Moyes said: "Tim popped up again with the winner, but that is what he does. I don't send him out telling him to score goals, he just does that anyway. He always goes out to score, he always wants to score. He is a very important player for us and his influence is growing game by game."

He added: "It was Tim who forced their player into the offence that won us the penalty, and then he was there on the line to force the ball home when everyone else had stopped.

Mikel Arteta missed that early penalty, which left Zenit with 10 men after Nicolas Lombaerts was wrongly sent off for that handling offence.

Zenit's Dutch coach Dick Advocaat blasted the decision saying: "The referee got that one wrong, it left us with 10 men for an hour and cost us the game."

But Moyes would disagree with that view, even if he accepted that Lombaerts did not handle the ball.

Moyes said: "The penalty was a bit harsh, but we are having trouble with them at the moment, they just won't go in, it's the third we have missed in the competition.

"But they were unlucky with the penalty and the sending off, at the time I could not see it but now I have watched the replay on TV the ball looked to hit the lad's body, it didn't look like hand-ball.

"It hit his body and thigh so Zenit were definitely unlucky over that, and it cost them a player too."