Moyes, what's my view worth?

Comments (11)

Having stumbled across this superb site a few months ago I?ve enjoyed replacing occasional work time boredom with reading the fans comments, and I?m most intrigued by the apparent diversity in opinion surrounding the performance of David Moyes as manager of this great club. To put my views into context I?m a football fan who has followed Everton for 20ish years, but given the regularity with which I visit Goodison I?d be cheeky to call myself an Everton fan!

I would like to hear your views on whether Moyes is the right manager to lead Everton into a position where they are consistently challenging for the Premiership title?

For what it?s worth I think he is the right man.

From memory when he took over the reins in 2002 he inherited a small squad that lacked quality, a club that lacked transfer funds, a club that lacked progressive management, ownership and stability (5 managers in circa 9 years), and a side that had seemingly always languished in the bottom half of the premiership, occasionally narrowly missing relegation.

Under Moyes Everton have finished 7th, 17th, 4th, 11th and 6th, a big improvement on the group of preceding Premiership finishes, even though the squad was still small and for the most part transfer funds still lacked in comparison to rival clubs. For me, the improvement is largely down to Moyes intelligent management; he plays a style of football that is best suited to his squad i.e. in the past, Hoofball that was not pretty but relatively effective given the squad. Before I get the ?sounds like your advocating Hoofball? replies thrown at me, I don?t support it for the current improved squad, but I did understand its place while we lacked quality.

OK, I accept that the club is probably now under new better ownership and transfer funds have improved (if only this or last year) but in my opinion under Moyes Everton have overachieved based on the standard of the squad ? and Moyes is to thank for that. I also agree that Moyes is prone to the odd mistake, tactical naivety at home to Metalist, occasional suspect player selection but he is still cutting his teeth as a relatively young, inexperienced manager.

Moyes is intelligent, willing and able to learn, hard working, mostly liked by his players and determined to win trophies with Everton. He gives Everton much needed stability. He is now buying better quality players and slowly adapting our play away from the ugly, but at a time successful Hoofball, to a more attractive passing style.

For those Moyes doubters out there, what am I missing?
Gavin Uren, Midlands     Posted 01/11/2007 at 17:03:53

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