In any case, Moyes is making a lot of cash being our manager. I cannot see him walking out on the remainder of his contract. He will continue to make threats but he will never follow through. Going to Villa would be a like-for-like job ? they are in a similar predicement to us. If he was to leave, I doubt we could afford anyone big or decent.

The six clubs above us are pulling away because of their spending power ? not because our manager isn't good enough to take us higher. Would Shitteh be in the top four and FA Cup Winners if they had £1 million a year to spend instead of the £400 million they have spent over the last few years?

Moyes was getting Everton better and better on a modest budget and then the money just stopped and we are drifting behind teams now instead of keeping up with them. His only option is to sell players to raise funds. This means in order to add players to our team we have to first make it significantly weaker so we are always taking one step backwards in order to take one step forwards. We end up staying the same as other teams are continually moving forward.

This is why I can believe he would go to a club like Villa. He may not get a huge budget there but he wouldn't have to sell to buy so he could feel he could constantly gradually improve his team each season.

It must be so frustrating to have built a half-decent team and be forced to watch it get dismantled bit by bit through players leaving for more money and Champions League. Also watching those who stay loyal to the cause getting older each season knowing we don't have the money from their sale to replace them once their legs go...

When Davey goes then we should be looking for some fun at Goodison, you know... free-flowing attacking football. 5-4 to the toffees is better than the laboured and tired slow mechanical stuff we play.

I'd love Martinez.

Can't see Gus Poyet leaving cosmopolitan Brighton for the north.

It's imbecilic to believe that we can push on to be a top 4 club without significant investment. Upto the start of this season we're number 10 in the Premier spending league and I would guess lower than that in the last 3yrs. Chelski have a net spend of over £366 mil, Citeh £300mil, The Redshite £200mil, Spurs £176mil... I could go on. US £54mil thats £146mil less than Liverpool who will finish this season 1 maybe 2 places above us or Spurs who've spent £122mil more.

Imagine injecting say £100mil into our present team then if Moyes fucks up slag him off and go for a no-mark done-nowt like Jones... just because he's a blue.

We are skint, Moyes is doing well just to keep us where we are and I think he'll be with us a lot longer than most think on this site. I just hope he finally gets lucky with a striker or two so we can challenge the more monied clubs.

It is worth taking into account if Everton are tenth in the overall top spenders in the Premier League, Moyes has not excelled with his mean average of finishes as some people seem to conclude & the ten seasons prior we did not massively underachieve, although we should have done better, considering most people recognise a direct correlation between spending and league finishes.

The only stone left unturned in my mind is how much of a backing did the previous managers have in comparison to Moyes? ? ie, over each ten-year period, where does our spending land in a table? My assumption is that Moyes over the last ten seasons has had more backing than the managers in the previous ten seasons before him. I wonder if they could have improved their average league finishes if they had a reasonable backing like Moyes, such as Joe Royle being able to sign Flo, etc?

I have long wanted Moyes to go but have come round to the view that he should go, amicably, by choice and with the respect of Evertonians. In other words, Aston Villa should pay us compensation and take him. This is where the gamble lies; Kenwright appointing a successor. Not a safe pair of hands ? Reid, Jones, Royle etc ? but a gamble: Hoddle. Lambert or Poyet. Tread water and slowly drown... or go for it.

These managers are people in a competitive business with the prospect of untold riches if they manage to manage in the higher leagues. To see them as "supporters" who have made good is preposterous. This talk of Everton needing a "true blue" has bedevilled this debate for too long. Mr Jones may well be in danger of becoming a contemporary successor to the ludicrous past suggestions such as Peter Reid!!

If there has to be a change of manager ? as there must be at SOME time in the future then please let us inject a note of realistic, yet demanding criteria. Who the said person might be is beyond my compass but I would hope and pray that it would be someone with managerial/coaching talents, degrees of experience and success in related areas; a commitment to the enhancement of the game and a desire to serve his employers to the best of that ability and to help the club progress and be successful across a number of important areas and to take the club as a whole beyond the levels in which he found it.

Obviously a particular quality would be that he has an insight into, and respect for, the culture, historical traditions, and aspirations of the particular club but that quality by no means necessarily demands that he have been part of that club in the past or be related to it today. When you are paying obscene amounts of money to these people you want a little more than him being a 'native" of the city or a "supporter"!

And as regards a good budget, I think you will find that Cardiff City didn't have one of the biggest transfer budgets in the Championship. The Bellamy loan was largely funded by the parent club Manchester City. David Jones has regularly had to cope with seeing his best players "courted " by bigger/richer clubs and, considering that, he has done extremely well to maintain Cardiff City as a force in that division.