I believe Moyes's major strength is also his weakness. Moyes gets the best out of his players because of his loyalty to them but this is at a cost and the reason why I think we tend to have slow starts.

Moyes allows his tried and trusted players as many opportunities as possible to be in his starting 11 and to hit form while his bench must bide their time and earn their place in the side.

However I dissagree that Moyes doesnt know his best 11, I believe he plays his best 11 in Europe when he has an excuse to drop his loyal but inferior players, which is why we have done so well in Europe in recent seasons.

IMHO (which was a tax bill when I was a lad) you’ve flown an interesting kite here Derek.

I am a fan of Evertonian Total Football - the 4-6-0 we played when nothing else was available last season. While others clamour for 4-4-2 or 4-3-3, our strikerless strike force left the opposition wondering what to do with themselves and unleashed passing attacking moves to delight the eye and result in goals. And quite right - Moyes, nor any other coach, would have done this unless forced to. And he probably won’t do it again.

But I hope Phil Neville is well — he has put a lot into this club. Possible outcomes from his injury include:

1. Rodwell must now be the undisputed midfield anchor

2. Heitinga becomes the alternative to Tony Hibbert (let’s see how that one goes)

3. Captain? Joe Yobo is showing himself to be a much better olayer going forward than many of us have imagined. Will the responsibility encourage him to lead the team in this way or make him sit back? Don’t know — I’d give it to Leighton who will carry on just the same. Distin seems to have given us a lot of quality around that area to make this less of a problem in any case.

I think the Yak is going to return to make a big impression this season, but I’m glad that Moyes seens to be keeping faith in Jo. He’s getting stronger by the game and may yet be one of those 6 midfielders scoring lots of goals for us.

It is a bit of a myth that we always make slow starts:

From the first 6 League games we have taken

2002: 8 points

2003: 5 points

2004: 13 points

2005: 3 points

2006: 12 points

2007: 10 points

2008: 7 points

We could get a maximum of 9 with 2 wins against Blackburn and Pompey this year.

A bt of a mixed bag, and certainly not ALWAYS a slow start.

Just to expand on Karl’s post;

2002-2003: Finished 7th (Moyes is voted LMA Manager of the Year)

2003-2004: Finished 17th

2004-2005: Finished 4th (Moyes is voted LMA Manager of the Year)

2005-2006: Finished 11th

2006-2007: Finished 6th

2007-2008: Finished 5th

2008-2009: Finished 5th (Moyes is voted LMA Manager of the Year)

Is there a trend building there? Anyway you can make you’re own conclusions, I just hope we don’t suffer the same "hangover" after winning the managers award again this season.

Back to the original post, although I like Moyes, I can’t pretend the same point Derek is making also hadn’t crossed my mind.
I think more than a a few people would agree that Moyes is reluctant to make changes, whether from the start or during a game. I thought for instance the starting line up and subsequent changes at Fulham were shocking. His tendancy to play players out of position or not recognise their best positions is a tad frustrating. We were under the cosh from the 46 minute against Fulham, why weren’t the changes made much sooner and why were the changes not positive?

Most of the changes in recent seasons that have been the most successful have more often than not been forced upon Moyes and probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise. In this respect I think he has been quite lucky.

I think we can all get a little frustrated with Moyes tactics and perseverance with two or three players that should be squad players at best

I just hope that following Thursdays performance, the same formation is at least given a chance to see how it copes in the premiership.
Assuming Billy is fit, the only possible change might be for Gosling at right back. Even though I thought he had a great game on Thursday as did all the starting eleven, he still has plenty of time on his hands. Though I think he will be a future right back, as from what I’ve seen so far, he is a little bit lacking when it comes to midfield, though I know he’s still young and has plenty of time to prove me wrong.

In my opinion and I admit that I’m not privy to what goes on at the training ground, I would hope that Heitinga has done enough in training to warrant a start at RB. This might also be very harsh on Hibbert, who’s had a great start to the season, especially at Wigan, but lets face it, we’ve got to give the new boy a run to see what he can do. I hope he’s a RB and not a CM as I wasn’t impressed with his cameo in that position last week. At least we finally have competition for places now, which has to be a huge positive. Is this why Hibbert has had a decent start? He’s certainly been working on his distribution and crossing.

I will however, be hugely disappointed if Ossie gets a start against Blackburn. For me Ossie has been the weak link in the side for far too long now and at the very least he needs a good long rest as it’s obvious he just isn’t cutting it. Whether its because he’s injured, out of position, confidence is shot or he’s just crap is anyones guess, but I for one will be gutted if he starts today, although I wouldn’t be surprised. This is my biggest bone of contention with Moyes as his loyalty to some players is detrimental to the team and style of play.

Anyway heres hoping that Billy is fit and Fellaini and Rodwell carry on their partnership in the middle.
Moyes will hopefully have some selection headaches when Arteta returns as to what is his best midfield, (but thats another thread).
You could probably add Nevilles name to that as well, given the managers frustrating tendancy to play his favorites no matter what, (I just can’t see Moyes not picking his captain, can you?)
I just hope that by then he doesn’t need any more injuries and suspensions to make him realise his best side.

Great point & Very accurate post!

The ignorance of this post has really onnoyed me. It’s ill informed and conceited.

First of all: "he who, in IMHO has, for the most part, never known what his best 11 was or how to play them"

In this day and age no Premier League club playing in European competition has an undisputed ’best 11’.

Everton usually play twice a week, against very different opposition. Tactics vary dependant on opposition, whether you are playing at home or away or whether it is European or domestic competition. Different players will be more effective dependant on the game plan. This is one of reasons why a large squad is important. Add fatigue, injury and form to this and ’best 11’ becomes a bit of an anomoly.

Secondly

"yet again Moyes ... has been handed a Get Out of Jail Free Card, by circumstances beyond his control"

This statement follows the assumption that last years season changing incident was Neville’s challenge on Ronaldo. Well if so are you saying that Moyes didn’t instruct Neville to go in hard on Ronaldo? Where you in the changing room for the team talk? Your point would hold a little more water had you implied that key injuries led to us changing formation last year (i.e. no fit strikers) - at least then your giving a previous example of ’circumstances outside of Moyes control’. Even then you’re clutching at straws. To suggest Moyes benefitted last season to injuries to his key players is quite ridiculous. Cahill’s return to fitness prbably had more to do with our return to winning ways than Yakubu’s injury.

Thirdly by posting this BEFORE any change in fortune you can’t lose. Moyes turns things around you can refer back to this and say ’Lucky Moyes, I predicted as soon as Neville got injured it would get him out of jail’. If he doesn’t turn it around, you can still blame him.

So Derek, how can Moyes win? What can he do right?

FFS we got to an FA Cup Final and finished top our ’our’ league last season (some of you won’t like that comment - and neither do I really ’ but it’s a fact that the only thing that will break the monopoly of the big 4 is a huge influx of money i.e. Man City - even then it’s not guaranteed) and that’s with Cahill missing at the start of the season, Yak and Arteta missing a lot of the season and Jags suffering a serious injury also.

Please explain what his ’get out of jail card’

I’m sure we will have a decent season overall. Moyes will get the team playing effectively enough to be challenging for Europe again, at least. However, my gripe is thta during the season we will only have a handfull of matches where the team get the ball on the floor & play some decent football. We all know they can do it, because we see the evidence for a few matches every season & most every season Moyes manages to improve the quality of players in the squad so the quality of football on display should be steadily improving & be prominent in more matches each season. Unless Moyes can develop the teams playing style I don’t see how he can progress beyond "best of the rest" & challenge for silverware, indeed even trying to remain "best of the rest" will get increasingly difficult.
I’m not calling for Moyes’ head, I just want to see his team playing football as well as we know they can a lot more consistently.

Ian Tunstead,

Nail hit squarely on head... Moyes seems to command good will by giving players more chances to redeem themselves than they would get elsewhere. Not sure the trade off is worth it.