Submitting this article slightly later than I’d have liked, although perhaps the homecoming defeat on Wednesday night puts an even more negative tint on any cynicism regarding the old manager’s homecoming…..
Part 1: Days of Future Passed…
In 2013, David Moyes left Everton for, in his own words, “better things”.
For their part, Everton, following Moyes’s departure, were also hoping for someone to take them to the proverbial next level.
That they’ve both come back to each other 12 years later – I’m not sure how I feel about this. How has it come to this? For both parties?
Well, for a while, the latter – Everton going to the next level with another manager – looked by far the more likely to happen.
The season immediately after Moyes’s departure, Martinez improved the playing squad, , the quality of the football on display and, most crucially, the results – all while keeping the usual (for the time) negative net spend. Prior to this, it was always felt that, unless we were to go on a spending spree, deviating away from the pragmatic, percentage approach of his predecessor would mean sacrificing results. So to achieve the trifecta of improving all three in such a short space of time really was, to use one of the Spaniard’s favourite words, amazing.
Combined with the misfortunes of our former manager at Old Trafford, both on the pitch and in the lack of positive activity in the transfer market, and, after years of narrative that Moyes was some sort of super-manager, that no other boss could have achieved the consistent respectable league finishes with plucky little Everton – for one stupidly glorious season, it actually looked as though the opposite might apply, and that Moyes’s cautious approach had actually been holding us back.
The reality was possibly somewhere in between, and this reality hit home the following year. Our 72 points in Martinez’s first season had been in no small part thanks to the defensive unit that Moyes had assembled and spent years coaching. Once Sylvain Distin aged out, as he did during the latter part of 2014, the game was up.
Even at the other end, opponents had grown wise to our flowing attacking game and found ways to stifle it. What’s more, Martinez’s first transfer window turned out to be, like everything else during his first season, an outlier. The overall quality of the squad began to deteriorate and the team began to regress.
Even so, Moyes’s reputation was depleted, and Everton’s still intact, as evidenced after Moshiri’s takeover and Martinez’s dismissal in 2016, when Moyes, now also ousted by Real Sociedad, was heavily linked to a return, only to see the big globally recognised name of Ronald Koeman take the Goodison hotseat.
Then, in 2017, while Moyes was finishing bottom of the Premier League with Sunderland, relegated for the first (and I hope only!) time in his managerial career, Everton enjoyed a solid first season under Koeman, with European football to look forward to in 2017-18 and an influx of expensive new signings to get excited about.
That would prove as good as it got for Everton and as bad as it got for Moyes. As Koeman, and a catalogue of other managers (with the possible exception of Ancelotti), floundered on the pitch, and the club was hit with Profitability and Sustainability penalties off it, Moyes was enjoying a renaissance during two spells at West Ham, taking them to a European trophy and seeing his stock rise once again.
Moyes and Everton were back on level terms. They were once again a match.
Had he returned prior to his time at West Ham, I believe there would have been far greater cause for concern. In addition to the disastrous outcome of relegation, the most surprising aspect of his time at Sunderland, for me, was his reliance on signing former Everton and Manchester United players he’d previously worked with – it was one thing when his coaching no longer produced results, and now the meticulous approach to recruitment, the eye for a bargain player, the extensive scouting, all seemed to have been lost.
However, it’s fair to say, at West Ham, he got his mojo back, in every aspect of his management. Those who read my “This week….” articles may remember that I had plenty negative to say about Moyes, yet even I was pleased to see him doing so well there, recapturing the spirit and relative success that seemed to have eluded him for almost a decade.
He could argue to have been further vindicated by the subsequent continuing misfortunes of some of his former clubs. I can’t speak for Real Sociedad, but certainly the mess Manchester United have been in, and Sunderland’s double-dip relegation after he left, suggest that the problems at these clubs ran a lot deeper than whatever mistakes he may have made during less than a year in charge at each.
His time at West Ham showed that he still has something to offer, and that, in the right circumstances, at the right club, he can still thrive. The question is, are these the right circumstances? And are we the right club?
Part 2: The Present: Keys of the Kingdom
The number 2002 is a palindrome. Which is ironic, because we’re right back where we started, in 2002 all over again. We’re 16th in the Premier League table, but on a downward trajectory and in danger of slipping further, and hoping that, at the very least, a new manager bounce will see things improve in the short term. We’ve turned to David Moyes in the hope of achieving this.
Is this where the similarity ends? Much has been made this week about how both the club and Moyes are different to the ones that parted ways in 2013. I feel we should instead be looking at the differences from the time he first arrived.
Back in 2002, I actually think he inherited a pretty decent group of players who simply hadn’t been doing themselves justice. They desperately needed someone to unlock that potential, but they weren’t bad players. The late Kevin Campbell summed it up nicely during the club’s cringeily titled Magnificent Seventh season review from Moyes’s first full season in charge, saying that they’d always had the quality, it was just the direction they’d lacked until Moyes’s arrival.
And this isn’t a slight on Moyes, an implication that he only did what he did because he inherited a good side. He still had to get the best out of those players – I thought maximising that potential could see them maybe 10th place, based on the fact that three more points would have seen them finish there 2 years earlier.
They were again around that position before the collapse in league form that ended Walter Smith. So for Moyes to have them pushing for the Champions League places in two of his first three full seasons in charge, achieving the fate in his third – it exceeded my expectations of what that group of players were capable of.
And he had to replace these players over time, and it’s fair to say that he left behind a better squad than the one he inherited, which in turn enabled Martinez to do so well with them in his first season.
My point is, I don’t believe the group of players he’s arriving to now have the quality of the ones in 2002. Could you say the current crop would be able to push for Europe with a couple of shrewd signings and good coaching? Put it this way – how many of them would get into the side of March 2002? Pickford definitely. Branthwaite, on a good day, yes. McNeil, maybe? I’m not sure any would after that.
There’s no-one with the pace of Radzinski, the strength and footballing brain of Campbell, the drive and thrust of Gravesen. For all his limitations, Scott Gemmill was probably a more creative player and better passer than any of the current Everton side. And there’s certainly no-one of Rooney’s talent ready to burst onto the scene.
He’ll also no longer have a cuddly chairman who’ll never put him under any pressure and will allow the team to be in the lower reaches for the first half of the season without any questions being asked. Moyes and Everton were such a good fit for so long because neither the board nor manager asked anything of each other. There was a brilliant article on here back in 2007 raising concerns about the easy relationship between manager and chairman, an article that proved to be sadly prophetic.
While it helped with the continuity and stability of the club, it also arguably hindered further progress. For both parties. For it’s possible that the culture of complacency and the years of sycophancy at Everton caused Moyes to lose his edge. Maybe had the Moyes of 2005 or 2007 taken over at Old Trafford, it could have been a different story…
In any case, the Moyes of 2025 won’t have that that luxury this time. The board and fanbase (already polarised by his return) won’t be as patient this time around. It’s a different club and squad to 2002. Also, the game itself is very different to 2002.
He arrived at a time when the drinking culture and lax approach to training, although dying out, was still prevalent at some clubs. As Micah Richards recently observed when having banter about Alan Shearer’s career, “the goalkeepers had beer bellies back then”.
Against that backdrop, the team being super fit, well drilled, and with a high work ethic instilled into them (many of the players were quite visibly slimmer and more agile in 2002-03 than they had been in the years before Moyes’s arrival) was enough on its own to make a difference, even before any changes to the footballing side. Off the top of my head, I can think of 6 points gained that season from injury-time goals.
Now though, all players at all clubs are super-fit athletes. All clubs have sports science staff, and dieticians, and analysts. The goalkeepers now all have six-packs. With statistics about player’s distance covered per game readily available, there’s no place for players to hide when it comes to putting in a shift.
It’s also a lot more difficult to find bargains – you’re not going to get a defender as talented and athletic as Joseph Yobo on a season-long loan now. And even if you did, as mentioned above, everyone else has become so much fitter and faster that a defender of Yobo’s pace and strength has become the norm rather than the exception and breath of fresh air he was at the time.
Anyone with the vaguest interest in football knows we currently struggle to score goals and lack creativity and bite in the final third. The problem is, you can no longer pick up attacking midfielders with the talents of Cahill, Arteta or Pienaar for a couple of million apiece, the latter too on a try before you buy basis on loan. The shelves at Marks & Spencer have already been plundered.
And lastly, as John Daley’s already said in his recent article, AniMoyesity, we’re not getting the same David Moyes we got in 2002. He’s no longer a 38-year-old ambitious young manager, fresh from almost getting back-to-back promotions with Preston NE, a manager who personally wants to get to the top and knows he’ll have to make the most of the Everton job in order to get there.
He’s now in his early sixties, has had mostly negative experiences of football in the past decade, and has also had some time out of the game – his move to Old Trafford was the last time he was head-hunted and immediately went from one job to another. These breaks may have done him good, and he may be wiser for these negative experiences.
However, even at his most talking-about-himself-in-the-third-person confident, he surely has the candour, even if he can only acknowledge it internally, to know that, after his short-lived spell at Old Trafford, and also given the reluctance by the top clubs to hire British managers, no Champions League level clubs are going to go near him again.
Without that incentive, and with this potentially being his last job before retirement, you’ve got to hope the motivation will still be there. Then again, I’d only be moaning about being used as a stepping stone if he was hoping to impress at Everton to move on to better things again.
Whatever happens, Everton desperately need their results to improve, and fast, if they’re to avoid opening the new stadium in the Championship. Moyes, having only just rebuilt his reputation and restored his standing in the game, risks undoing it all in a few months at Everton, and becoming tarnished as the man who took Everton down.
It’s a huge gamble for both. For everyone’s sake you’ve got to hope it pays off.