Addressing the Criticisms of Moyes's Performance at Everton

Unless I've missed it, according to your "analysis" Moyes has no weaknesses and made virtually no mistakes.

According to you he was operating against his peers with various disadvantages, yet you fail to mention any of the advantages he did have. One that springs to mind is a gutless chairman too afraid to sack him under any circumstances, resulting in Moyes having complete control of the club for 11 years with none of the stability issues that virtually all other managers have to deal with.

There is so much opportunity to pick holes with in your article I don't know where to start. Its not that everything in your article is wrong, but that you've failed to provide a balanced piece, giving a more complete picture of Moyes performance....and that article would be worth reading.

To take one obvious example, you complain about lescott leaving at the last minute resulting in Moyes being unable to bring anyone in, yet who was it that stopped lescott leaving when he'd made it clear he wanted to move?

Moyes did actually get to spend the Lescott money, but it was last minute panic buys that brought in Distin, Hetinga and Bily; whereas any competent manager should have kicked lescott out to City early in the summer, pocketed the cash, brought in carefully selected replacements and not fucked up the start of that season by playing a player who didn't want to be here.

Also, apparently when Moyes swaps a defender for a midfielder, he has the statistics to back up his change. Well, Marko, can you tell us how many times Moyes did this and how many times it worked?

I can think of several occasions this season alone when his negativity in substitutions resulted in us losing points. Chelsea being the most recent, but also Fulham and a few others I think. I'm struggling to remember one game where his bringing on a defender for a midfielder or forward gained us anything.

There were many times sitting at Goodison in the cold and damp conditions that I felt as far from feeling we had been lucky to appoint DM as a cat who had just used up his 9th life and still had 6 lanes of the M1 to negotiate.

One thing that annoys me above all about the Moyes In Brigade is you always mention the teams with budgets similar to us that have won cups now playing in lower divisions. So, according to you, winning a cup means automatic relegation? Would we have been relegated this year had we won the FA Cup? Or beaten Chelsea in 2009? Seems to me that a cup-winning run would not have been nearly enough to drop Everton from our usual position of 7th place (The pro-Moyes people love finishing in 7th, for some reason) all the way to 18th.

On what basis would the 'gutless chairman' sack him? You can't pick that particular hole in Marko's article as an advantage if he is actually performing as Marko puts foward. Why would he be sacked if he perceived at doing well. Are you saying that secrtely Kenwright thoiught he was underperforming but was scared? Risible.

If your argument is that Moyes should have been sacked for, say, any one of, or any combination of Chelsea 2-1 (FA Cup Final), Liverpool 2-1 (FACSF) Wigan 3-O (FACQF) or Liverpool 3-0 then I'd say that was ridiculous and reactionary.

The Lescott thing - it dragged out over cash and we got a fabulous deal, especially with no other bidders, of £24M for a centre half who had previously had a bad knee injury after (from memory) an initial offer of single digit mils - £6M I think, And your three listed panic buys would have been scouted long in advance. I'd take Distin plus a wodge of cash for Lescott any day. Billy not so much.

Your last para - either very selective memory or just poor. Off the top of my head I can think of two occasions in the last weeks where Heitinga has come on and we've won - one of which he scored the winner.

I don't agree everything Moyes did was as rosy as some paint and he frustrated the hell out of me at times particularly at opposing corners - but don't reinvent things the other way to make a point.

He achieved good League finishes, playing a well drilled first team, who all knew where they should be on the pitch.

His M.O. was to trust his first 14 or 15 in a very small squad, who were well paid, and more or less guaranteed to start every week, no matter how they performed. They were sent out to win at Goodison, and not to lose away from home.

Many a season we had to endure some shit football, until the forty points were on the board, then the shackles were removed. He could never quite go for it against the perceived bigger clubs, and THAT stat is a stain on his record at Everton. His derby record is fairly diabolical, and the Wembley semi still hurts.

4-5-1 worked for him, and the team knew the system well. He kept trusted players like Osman, Hibbert and Neville when others may have refreshed the team with new faces. He kept faith with Saha and Cahill two seasons too long, but he was also very loyal to players. You can't fault him for this loyalty, but he will have to become more ruthless in his new role.

7/10 - would have been an 8 with silverware.

It's fair enough, I actually agree with you on Moyes to an extent. He is a good manager, we have improved remarkably under him, and I disagree with a lot of the mob.

But I think you would have looked a lot better if the argument wasnt so one sided. You brush off certain criticisms, like not playing youth, with the amount of raw players, or the shocking European results, by saying "every teams has bad results"

I think you're going to get a lot of people attacking your article, and I think rightly so.

I think you would back most managers to go to O.T. and win something.

However the one thing that lets all your hard work down is that it is not a balanced argument although no doubt containing factual evidence.

For me Moyes did a very good job for us – especially the first five years. However, I am greedy for my club to succeed and I wanted him to better.

Now I want to move on and install someone who will do better... Will BK let me down?

Probably the most divisive manager in the history of this club.

I won't spend the time you did but will just highlight a couple of things you conveniently decided to ignore.

1) when looking at money wasted on players, you rightly include the amounts recovered on the resale but completely ignore the wages. E.g. the club did NOT get most of the cash paid out on billy back etc

2) I will admit any day that Moyes did a relatively good job but please stop the crap about him being good at developing youth. In the 11 years he was in charge I believe he brought through Rodwell and Anichebe as regular '1st team' players from the youth set up. (I'll even chuck in Coleman for you although he didn't come through our system). That is pretty shite whichever way you look at it. Whilst we're on youth - care to explain the substitutions when we were 4-0 up at home against Cheltenham?

3) The old favourite about the cups and how only the 'big' teams win most of the time so Moyes cannot be held responsible for no silverware. Again this is utterly twisting the facts. WE REGULARLY WENT OUT TO NON BIG TEAMS. Please reread the sentence in capitals again, having digested this you will now see that the whole 'only the big teams win' line of argument is a bit bollocks - say that to yourself whilst thinking of Oldham, Birmingham, Fulham, Reading, Shrewsbury, Wigan, Blackburn, Leeds etc. We can't exactly win when we're being sent packing by the likes of championship Reading - at home!

Yes cups are a one off, but regularly f'cking up against lesser sides is no longer just 'one off' - the guys simply could/cannot do one off knock out games.

I could go on and on but haven't got the time nor inclination. Lets just say it how it was - Moyes did a great job in steadying the ship and getting us stable. However, now that we are stable we need someone else to take us forward as he hit his glass season about 3 years ago.

One last thing - the guy has gone, can we now please finally move on.

On the trophy front. Moyes will be EXPECTED ! To win trophies with Man Utd,they don't accept anything otherwise. If he doesn't win at least one trophy a year it will go tits up for him.

He could live up to Evertons expectations because basically we didn't have any, neither did the board. Keeping us in the prem does not count for a club of our size and stature.

For every positive such as the addition of the flair of Mirallas and the blossoming of the ever improving Coleman, there are negatives and might have beens such as the choice of a rapidly declining Phil Neville instead of Gibson for the Wigan Cup game and the lack of progess in turning Ross Barkley into a regular starter.

I hope we are lucky enough to get a manager that everyone will get behind and support and that we are not looking back with regret in 12 months time. It was heartening to see the widespread support for Pereira a couple of nights back. Bielsa with Neville as assistant for continuity factor would be my choice, based on the Bilbao performances last season.

I have to wonder where we would have finished if only we had the Feb to May 2012 version of Jelavic playing this season. Would Moyes have reached the heights of acceptability on this forum as Pereira did on Wednesday night?

At MU, the perception will go the other way. The first set back will snowball fast and he will be seen to be presiding over a decline.

For all he did for our club, he also treated it with contempt when he did a 'Gosling'.

I have never believed that Moyes is perfect - not at all. One small example is that I totally blame him for that derby defeat at Anfield, where the man with no forehead scored a hat-trick. I also have reservations about Moyes's treatment of strikers, specifically Jelavic.

In my world opinion is to be welcomed, but not bitter, ill-informed, self-important bullshit. Which is why I no longer respond to Ross Edwards's posts.

I love talking about the history of Everton and managers of the past, so I wish people would post more articles about the likes of Joe Royle and Howard Kendall, then i'd gladly talk all night

Don't forget for many years the club under Moyes was not all rosy stuff, playing free flowing football and being in 6th. Remember the scrape with relegation? Remember first halves of countless seasons where we were on relegation form for the first 4 months, then champions league form for the last 4? That was one of Moyes hallmarks. He couldn't even work out himself what the hell was going on with our shit starts year after year.

At any other club really shit starts often result in the manager being fired. But BK had stuck with Moyes and Moyes had 11 years of rock solid stability to turn the club around. He's done a good job, but you can't deny he's had a better environment to work in from that point of view, than many of his peers.

And Joe, the Lescott thing did not drag out over cash. It dragged out because Moyes wanted to keep hold of the player.

You're well within your rights to hold a blinkered view of Moyes abilities, but you can't rewrite history to suit. Have a read of these links if your memory is a little hazy:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/e/everton/8175725.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/e/everton/8116248.stm

Its clear a sizable offer was on the table earlier in the summer and if Moyes was open to letting him go, negotiations could well have got us more than we eventually got for him. By the time he did leave, he'd handed in a transfer request and been dropped by Moyes due to bad attitude and stunk the place out at goodison. City had us by the balls by time a fee was agreed entirely because Moyes wanted to keep hold of lescott way past the time it was clear he should be sold.

Couldn't agree more. Joe Royle is one of my favourite Evertonians: a gentleman, a true football man, witty, erudite and Blue to the bone. Along with Brian Labone and Alex Young, Joe is the personification of Evertonia, in my view.

[This approach was the original intent when we first introduced the ability to comment on ToffeeWeb articles many years ago but the sheer volume of traffic and the breadth of personality types now participating on threads has led to a gradual erosion of quality.]

Please stick to discussing the topic
a) with some reason, thought and purpose
b) without goading other contributors.

Your article reads like a well put together resume, that highlights the good to the max and glosses over any inconsistencies. Soon he will believe his own hype.

I wonder if you can do a similar critique for Kenwright? It would be interesting but an awful lot shorter in length.

2012-13 Premier League Season

Bryan Oviedo: 1 start, 14 sub appearances (Meanwhile, Naismith is out wide….)
Ross Barkley: 2 starts, 5 sub appearances (What?!?!?)
Apostolos Vellios: 0 starts, 6 sub appearances (As Jelavic trips over himself in the box)
Francisco Junior: 0 starts/appearances (Neville puts opposing striker in on goal. Again.)
Matthew Kennedy: 0 starts/appearances (See Naismith)
Shane Duffy: 0 starts, 1 sub appearance (most criminal given Heitinga’s form)
Conor McAleny: 0 starts/appearances (banging them in for the u21 side….)

Moyes uses the least players of ANY manager in the Premier League. Teams with more/less talent all rotate more and freshen the squad when things get stale. He stands pat, wears out the same 12-13 players, and then subs in a replacement when one inevitably gets injured because they are overworked. Period.

"It will be unlikely that Everton will maintain the current position in the league without changes in ownership because it would require a top-class manager. None of the names mentioned have shown this sort of quality. Some look outright disasters."

Swansea City
Laudrup finished 9th I think won league cup and likely to finish in as similar position maybe even better next year. Has purchased players of the kalibre of Michu.

Moyes finished just above relugation zone within his second season, only staying up becuase of a poor Leicester team. We did better after that but still not won anything not really a top manager but he has improved us a lot.

First, every manager makes mistakes. I find it rather silly that people pick single matches as proof of something.

Secondly, I think people are confused what a manager does regarding the youth setup. He does not train the kids, and usually doesn't even pick them or release them. For instance Calum McManaman was released at age 16 so I bet it was the youth coaches that made the decision, not Moyes (and even if he did, so what?). A manager more or less decides which players are ready to be tried with the first team and gives them playing time if he feels they are ready. Plus stuff that varies between clubs (for instance, planning training programs, could be done by a coach or the manager might have input). He can also sign some youth players, but the youngest tend to be signed by the youth coaches. Everton youth setup have their own modest transfer budget. Green for instance was, as far as I know, signed this way.

As such, the manager can't polish turd. He can only work with what the pipeline produces. Moyes did improve this pipeline witnessed by the increasing number of youth internationals. But if the youth players are not good enough for PL level, what is he supposed to do? I emphasized this by listing players that fans wanted Moyes to play more who haven't exactly impressed since.

Basically the manager does not have time to plan every youth teams every training anyways so it's up to the coaches to improve them and scouting network to find the players. Manager's responsibility is to turn these players into Premier League players, if they are capable of it in the first place.

Naming players in the current squad and saying they should be played is the same game that has been seen for the last 11 years. Then these players usually drift into the lower divisions never to be heard of again.

And, as has been said by Lyndon, and several posters that article was not even meant to be even-handed. It was meant to be an answer to the critic.

Do you notice some inconguity in your call for Oviedo to replace him?

Velios is crap, Youtube the Fulham away game from last season when he started and match. You'll only have to watch the first 45 minutes as he was hauled off then.

No silverware? Tell me which teams have won silverware? Tell me which teams have had the same manager for 11 years and won nothing? I'm listening.

Youth - the youth set-up has to be brimming with world class players? No, but sometimes, in the one or two games of the season when you're up a few goals it is a good idea to give them a run to try and improve their confidence, talent, and see what we have. Some of the best sportsmen in history have been terrible trainers, so just to judge them on that is ludicrous. Why bother signing them?

Results against the top teams good? They have been quite good for some time, but it's the constant predictable fuck-ups against cannon fodder that shows his colours. Players don't need motivation to play against Man Utd/City at Goodison. It's going to the JJB, Loftus, Madjeski and playing like it means something that shows motivation.

This whole article was basically a summary of the IMWT apologies for the last four years.

Also, not many of us have used just one game to pin-point Moyes' shortcomings as a manager. Most of us who criticise him have seen patterns for the past several years and made a conclusion. That doesn't mean that it's completely correct or unbiased, but I didn't go from being part of the IMWT pre-2008 to MOB over night. It took him ransoming us for funds he knew we didn't have, some very poor results against sides we should have battered, and the 2009 FA Cup Final debacle.

To those that say we should move on from the Moyes debate, why do we continue to discuss Smith, Royle, Kendall etc? Is Moyes off-limits?

But, as Wayne says on #434. no faults and few ( if any) mistakes.

Moyes has said numerous times after poor results and / or performances, after many self proclaimed 'good draws' ...in effect shit happens, it was just one of those days....* mentally crossing arms in time honoured game show manner...' No Blame ! '

He has an unbendable belief in what he does and how he does it. We have all heard of and sometime applauded his my way or the highway attitude drethe )... it may be summed up thus.

I do it this way so it must be right...It is right because this is the way I do it.

A whole heap of stats etc however do not tell the whole story, thats just what he did.

They're just a plea for mitigation prior to the court's verdict ( copywrite C. Foster ) which in my opinion is ... Close but no cigar... that what he did.

But it ain't what you do it's the way you do it. That's what separates the very competent from the great and dare I say it losers from winners.

That characteristic typifies many devoutly religious people: it's similar to "the Bible is true because the Bible says the Bible is true..."

People of this ilk - like Moyes - adopt ways of working and behaving which feed off these belief systems and principles: they work very hard and apply them fanatically, and this delivers success up to a point, but it fatally constrains their imagination.

As much as Moyes improved us from third-rate to second-rate in 11 years (congratulations) Moyes' safety-first, stats-based, Presbyterian P.E. teacher yelling from the sidelines approach tested the patience of many, and gave me no reason to believe we would have progressed further with him, even with more money.

I'm glad to see the back of him, and hope we get someone who brings a bit of flair and excitement back to our club. I'd even take poorer results for a good spell if the style was right and the hope and spirit returned.

Coyb

Anyone can see Moyes has done a good job on dragging us back up, yes he wasnt infallible but then who is? Maybe, you are all looking for the perfect manager but then even the special one has just been booted out of Real Madrid.

But some of the points on here are really scraping the barrel of credibility.

John Hughes (598)

I have to really disagree that analysis 'The really successful people in life are those who are prepared to take risks'. If you study the most successful people they don't they take risk they just appear to.

Then once you start naming managers from the old 1st division it all starts falling apart as its got no relevance to modern day era football when a risk will cost the club millions of pounds.

In football terms, the Cloughs, the Shanklys, nearer to home HK and latterly in the Premiership SAF have all taken risks. No they never, they were expert man managers and coaches and had worked their way up the management ladder.

For instance, take Howard Kendall; if Howard had listened to medical advice he would never have signed Andy Gray or Peter Reid forexample - but he took a huge gamble on them both and it paid off handsomely. Again it wasnt a huge gamble, Kendall knew these players and had tried to sign Reid earlier before he got crocked and with Gray he knew that he needed an older player to mentor Sharpe and Heath.

Clough always gambled against the odds and won out - he took chances tactically, gambled on "has beens" and probably surprised himself how he came out on top most of the time. That not true either, he had his Taylor his assistant coach check the players out before he signed them.

For starters, I think anytime the club spend money on youngsters Moyes probably has oversight. Taking George Green as an example, we paid £175,000 for him with addons which might see the transfer rise to £2M. Are you telling me Moyes didn't know about this?

Here is a quote from the time:

"Bradford City have sold the “next Wayne Rooney” to Everton for an upfront fee of £175,000 with upto £2million in addons. Bradford City Head Of Development is believed to have done the deal in just 11 minutes after receiving a call from David Moyes begging for a last chance to speak to George Green, the 15 year old which attracted the attention of over 20 clubs including Bayern Munich, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, Arsenal and Rangers.

With Tottenham Hotspur favourites to sign the boy, everything changed after the call from David Moyes and being guests of honour at the Everton v Liverpool match in which George Green visited the dressing room and was presented with an Everton shirt."

It annoys me that some people seem to think that anything that could be negative or turn out negative is not the fault of Moyes, and anything positive was obviously Moyes doing.

That wasnt my point, John said that only risk takers are winners which is certainly not true, and then he cherry picked a few instances to back up his outlandish theory. If you read around each point then you can see each was a calculated risk where the positives outweighed the negatives.

In modern football, I cannot see any instances where any managers take any gamble or high risks as the stakes are just far too costly.

Maybe I was a bit harsh on saying 'scraping the barrel', I really meant to reference some of the previous posts - apologies.

I agree that (some) ' successful people in my experience are those who are prepared to go against the grain at crucial times'. But that does not mean they were risk takers. Winners are guys who work to the maximum proper preparation prevents piss poor performance. and we certainly know from players and fellow coaches that Moyes used this in his coaching. Whether he does go on to be a success that is a different matter, and I certain;y hope he does except the 2 times a year when he completely has a brain-fart and plays all his reserves and names Fergie (Alex) in goal against us.

I am sad to say that Toffee web is the only place I have ever seen anyone have a bad word to say about David Moyes.

YES, Moyes had his faults, I don't think anyone is saying he didn't but to say he did anything other than improve this club and over achieve I would love to see a piece written like this that would convince me !

Fergie might have built and dismantled a number of teams thats because he had the money to do it, and because it took Moyes until 2009 to build a really good team and then it was dismantled from underneath him as we were crying out for some investment in that squad as they looked ready to push on.

he should receive credit for stabilising the club. But that's all. The Moyes brigade should admit he did play players out of position; his substitutions were odd to say the least; he didn't bring young players on;he froze in the really big games etc.

But he's at united now so that's that. Lets hope the the new manager is as good on defensive shape as Moyes but a better judge of a centre forward!

John Stones has only just signed and needs time to see how we do things. Would you expect him to replace Coleman. I heard he has been signed as a future CB, at 18-19 you don't play CB in the premier league.

George Green is just a kid, he has only just done his GCSE's and has not played for the u-21 team yet!

If Moyes contract stipulates that he has the final say on any transfers if the money is available, he could be sanctioning moves already. You are talking about a manager whom probably knew he was going to Man Utd ages ago, and maybe strung us all along with no respect. How much of a fight did he put in in January to find a striker, Did he know in January that he was going, if Utd won the league?.

The club tried for Negredo in Jan, we were all disappointed, but to consider Moyes as not being arsed is simply baseless.

The points about a contract where Moyes has final say over everyone on transfers is just farcical

The new manager will have a huge task on his hands to achieve 6th place next year with Arsenal rumoured to be finally opening the bank, Liverpool no doubt spenidng there usual 50 million (then complaining they haven't spent anything) and Tottenham a year better and looking to invest. Us on the other hand will probably come out with some ridiculous excuse as to why there's no money to spend before player sales depsite increased revenue. What do people reasonably expect the new manager to do? Lead some blazing crusade into the top 4 making light of no funds by playing attacking football? Look at the squad, anyone can see that its not good enough for top 4. Arsenal took our best player and with eveyrone fit he probably doesn't make their first team. We'd have any of their strikers over ours - any, yet people are still scratching their heads over why we're not in the top 4 as though Moyes bringing on naismith for 5 minutes and not playing Barkley as often as he could is somehow the reason. Get real, without a major change in the football landscape or some form of miracle manager we're not seeing the top 4 for a long time with or without Moyes.

Hence myself and others who might expect any decent "analysis" to be a more well rounded piece, rather than a rebuttal of oft cited criticisms, had pointed this out in our responses.

Steven(709) I don't know anybody who is perfect, least not David Moyes. Therefore if the people on this site are the only people you know who have ever said anything bad about him, then you're probably listening to too many people with their heads up their arses or sycophantic yes-men like Pip.

You see the majority of the commenters here don't need to waste their time on facts and making a compelling argument, because they already know the truth, i.e. that Moyes was tactically naive, played dour football, bottled the big matches, was in BK's pocket (or was only here to line his own pockets), was poor at team selection (usually playing his favourites), didn't promote youth and generally has held Everton back.

Fortunately for these soothsayers, those idiots at Utd have been hoodwinked into taking him off our hands, so we'll now see just how poor Davie was. FACT.

We should have bought Yakubo instead of Beattie and we made big mistakes with buys when we made the Champions League. I don't know if Moyes is a good manager if he wins the Champions League this year.