There's most of me saying that he will fail and that he won't last a season if he doesn't deliver. Mourinho has always wanted to succeed Ferguson, he's only saying he didn't so he can gain more attention. He loves the limelight and he'd say anything to get it. Not that I'm doubting his success, it's his charecter.

It seems too coincidental that Moyes announced a stall in his contract in January, I think that Fergie told him then that he would be lined up in the summer.

Shaun, you have every right to be bitter, he messed us about for 5 months when he knew all along he was leaving. Anyway, we can look forward to a more humble, attacking style of management under Bobby M next season.

In Roberto we trust..

Fergie giving him the nod didn't make it a done deal - last time he resigned he changed his mind.

The trick was ensuring no complications with contracts and compo payments while fooling enough to preserve his myth (should the worst happen and he had to stay).

I don't blame him in the least not his fault people are mugs.

I hope he wins feck all, and is sacked after 12 months, the same with ANY manager who is at that club, and every other club in the PL.

The bad patch we went through in January wasn't because he wouldn't sign a new contract but that he didn't have his mind on the job in hand. As a diversion, to suggest he wouldn't mind coaching in the Bundesliga, simply adds another piece to the jigsaw.

I give him no more than 18 months. Struggling to keep his head above the slurry what gems will he have in store for manure fans by way of an excuse.

Cups or not, I would have told him to fuck off, it's about time our support got back to hating them bastards — they are our rivals still, so get shut of the small-time behaviour.

But I am amazed with the comments regarding United though, we are rivals? We finished 26 points behind them, I hardly think they are going to be worried about us next year.

I respect our history and tradition, but some of you guys are lost in the past. As Ray pointed out above, I laugh at RS fans that suggest that United are their rivals.

Bear in mind we were in the hunt for a champions league place until a few weeks from the end of the season. How unsettling an effect would it of had on the players? Every time we lost a game fans would be arguing that he should go as he hearts not in it etc

As for Jose's utterances he may well have known, he may have been sounded out before our ex-manager who knows. It's all water under the bridge now and a new chapter awaits.

Our current rivals are Spurs and Liverpool. I personally do not recognise teams like Stoke, Norwich or Southampton as our rivals. But yes, the word itself can be used in many ways if you wish to do so. But I think you have not quite got the context of what people were discussing.

Paul, on the other hand, if a player was running his contract down but ran himself into the ground every week and played a blinder and helped us into the Champions League would he still be a Judas? Or would we all wish him well at his new club, grateful for his efforts in making our season a success?

Full of promises and failures to deliver.

Anyone who cant see Moyes had had enough of him in January and cant see that Kenwright was well aware of the situation must be blind in the extreme.

Certain people were already mentioning Martinez had been lined up months ago.

You can look at it two ways if Moyes had left during his contract terms and the season fell apart I personally would have thought a lot less of him than seeing out the season and his contract.

IMO he was overdue to go anyway because his frustration with Kenwright and Elstone was affecting the club.

I thank him for what he did for us and I am glad we moved on. I have my reservations about Martinez but for now I think we need to look forward not backwards.

I suspect that our realistic rivals this season are RS, Man U and Spurs, with an outside chance of Arsenal too if they're inconsistent.

Obviously this pre-season is still young and there are many players yet to be bought/sold, but City and Chelsea currently have the stand-out talented squads and best managers. We probably come in the second bracket of teams chasing a european spot, and I would now include Man U in those teams, rather than in the elite.

Don't get me wrong, Moyes does not get off the hook for his duplicity this year, but, guess what, I'm more interested in Roberto Martinez this minute.

And, good news, I'm watching Bobby on Bien TV (US) right now and at half-time in the Italy/Mexico match he has commented:

It might even be wise for Mexico to make a sub right now, at half-time.

Mexico, I feel, are playing too far back and not pushing up to pressure Italy. They are giving Italy far too much respect.

Mexico need to work much harder on their passing game and getting ball to feet as quickly as possible.

Italy are doing the most important thing right now, playing with flair and getting the ball to their men fast

I think I'd rather focus on these things than the new manure gaffer.

All sounds good to me

Personally I don't think he did anything wrong, and left as his contract ran out - seems like pretty standard employment process to me. Just because its a football club doesn't have any bearing on it.

Oh and he did leave for Man Utd, who happen to be one of the biggest football clubs in the World. I don't think many people with ambitions not being realised in their current role would have done any different.

No ill will from me, for what its worth.

As far as Moyes is concerned, you're right: he's now gone... but I would say he was far more successful at his job than our board are at theirs.

Moyes wasn't born an Evertonian like you and I, so you are right, he did have every right to move on when he felt the time was right. But what really irritates me is when people try to defend him and say that he didn't do anything wrong. He willingly misled every single Evertonian. He was the manager of our club and was making decisions that affected our club when he knew all along that he would soon be managing Manchester United. an honourable man would have walked, or at least said that he would not be staying at the end of the season. He did neither, in fact he portrayed faux indignation with anybody who dared question as to why his contract remained unsigned.

For those who say that we should just move on and forget Moyes, you do have a point... but I would love to see your reaction if he makes a cash offer for Baines which he knows Kenwright can't turn down. Yes, it is time to move on... but the apathy of our board – and even worse, some fans who seem content to drop their trousers and bend over every time Man Utd or some other "big" club come knocking – just sickens me.

Maybe you just can't see that he did his job until the end of the season with 100% professionalism, regardless of the fact that he was lined up to become Man Utd boss this summer. No-one would ever change jobs if they thought like you! It's time for everyone to move on.

By the way, he is now free to bid for Baines like everyone else. It's only if the board decide to cash in that any such bid would become relevant.

Whether or not Baines is enticed or allowed to go will have as much to do with our board and how we are no longer masters of our own financial destiny... as illustrated many times over the past decade or more.

All I will say though, in broadest Scouse accent you could imagine is ; go ' an bury yer fuckin' 'ed - yer knob 'ed!!

and that is after a full day on it fer a scouse faarders day!!

Not building ships though, right?

Up the workers!

Oh aye - the old Lairds is going strong now, but more of a ship repair yard, and into the fab of wind turbines.

Not there any more myself, but wish I was - great craic. Office life is clean, but full of gobshites who have never witnessed West Ham on the ordinary in 1981.

Never cross the river when home, so lovely to know
CL is doing well

Jeez, West Ham, Queens Road, the chicken run, always got hammered on the train to Euston, great great times, adrenalin, hyped up .....

Was it '81 when we finally got to go back to Chelsea after Kensington High St '78 when they got relegated?

That was an epic encounter '81, if it was '81, everyone showed up, 8am ordinary stuffed with designer gear

Good days...

Up the workers!

The irony of course, is if he had turned them down, would we have been happy with a manager so lacking in ambition / self belief?

The Board should have been prepared for this eventuality, short-list prepared, & a quick replacement found - not the long drawn-out saga we've suffered. Moyes should have been gone as soon as he accepted MUFCs offer & a caretaker should have handled the last 2 matches. The ludicrous way Moyes was feted at our last home match was as though he was retiring at the end of a long & successful career, rather than moving to a 'better' rival.

If there's any fingers to be pointed regarding this episode in the clubs history then they should be pointing at the Board rather than Moyes.

After years of inept impotence by those supposedly running our club, papered over by Moyes's achievements on a shoestring, we appear to be down among the dead beats and frankly that's nowhere near good enough. Yet somehow it's Moyes who some want to vilify? So what if he looked after himself (if that was the case, maybe he just no longer saw any future at GP)...

The question should really be why would anyone ever really want to leave us and how have we fallen so far?

That's an easy one - we don't have a pot to piss in and our board (rightly) won't pour money into a club with nothing to offer an investor. Simple.

You can hardly blame them for not wanting to piss their money away on a football club that missed the [financial] boat years ago.

We're pretty fucked in many ways, and the continued papering-over you mention, was all that kept us up there.

Personally I fear our status as 'best of the rest' will soon be a distant memory, as mid-table obscurity beckons.

BK has done a lot of good as well.......I just can't remember what those things are!

At the end of the day, Everton has been badly mis-managed for years & years, and only now are we really seeing the (rotten) fruits of that period. When football changed so massively at the point when the Premier League began, we were already a sinking ship and have slowly but surely carried on sinking ever since.

We are simply not an attractive investment for anyone, so I doubt we'll ever see billions coming to Everton.

Moyes did really well if you are talking about a mid-table team but if you are talking about Everton in any other era then he just didn't cut the mustard. Always one of the big 'five' now we have been overtaken by Man City and Chelsea.

Regardless of money, I still believe a team can succeed at the highest level with the right manager. Look at Notts Forest when they won the European Cup. Weren't they competing against the wealth of Europe?

Moyes was ok for three years but that was all.

Buyers have invested and taken over clubs in worse financial situations than ours.
They've even bought clubs (who've poor finances) with smaller and more outdated grounds than GP.

This type of investor expects a low asking price to allow for investment into the cub instead. These investors look to modernise stadia, invest in players, and seek to exploit as many commercial opportunities as possible to help grow the club (and it's value).

However no investor would buy a club with poor finances, poor stadia AND with 7 years to go on a 10 year agreement restricting all merchandising profits from being any more than £3M a year. Unless of course the asking price was somewhere close to zero.

Now although I can't remember where I put my fags 7 minutes ago, certain memories of that day are very clear.

At the time, I was working in a Butchers in Fontwell (W.Sussex).

There was loads of work there back then and you could leave a job and walk straight into another same day (I worked in a Little Chef, a Heron Garage, wholesalers Nurdin & Peacock, a flower nursery called Framptons...).

Anyway, my guv'nor gave me the day off and I hitched to London.

My first lift was from a feller who had maybe the most pronounced stammer I've ever heard.

It wasn't one of those (cartoon) "f...fff.ff..f" stammers, more like...

"Oh Everton are playin' Chelsea, I used to support ChEEAWEEE..ooo.. AWWEWEWEEWE.. ooo.. EAAAWSEA"

I was only 18 and my eyes must have been on fucking stalks when he did it first.

I remember getting great lifts and being at the ground dead early and shitting myself just walking about and nervous that I might fall prey to 'Have you got the time?' and that that my accent might give me away.

I eventually met up with a couple of lads I knew (not very well) and went in.

We were made up with the win, but deffo nervous afterwards, imagining all sorts of Kung-fu stars getting whizzed at us (well the NOTW reckoned...).

Coming out I got in behind two rather large brothers who, for a time, had the Hillside in Huyton.

One of them (no names no pack-drill) was like Bluto and Giant Haystack combined and I figured 'safe enough'.

Once out it was head down, no eye contact, head for the tube.

Now something DID go on down in the tube, but it was that day I learned that if you stand still and look like a 'civilian', there is actually very little chance of you coming to any harm (worked for me on many occasions - you kind of pull a facial expression that says 'nothing to do with me')

There WERE a few groups running about and I heard glass being smashed and boot-steps running hither and thither and I'm sure one or two did come to grief.

However when the train eventually, came in I got on (as did many Chelsea supporters).

I was going to stay with relatives in Crawley on the Saturday night, so ended up at Victoria (I think) and..that was it.

So I was there but didn't see anything really - maybe I was there before it REALLY kicked off, I've no idea, but when the legend began to grow, I would proudly tell one and all "Yeah, I was there"

(if they pressed me for details I'd take a sharp intake, wink and say "You don't want to know")

As for 1981 - oh by then Everton were amongst the worst imo.

(and no silly calling cards either!).

19 August 1978. We beat them 6-0 four months before, Big Bob Latch got his thirty.

Got the ordinary down; vodka and orange. There was always a nice little group of us from Crosby/Waterloo; used to go away with Keith Mullen who ended up bassist I think in The Farm (he was a bit of a nutter).

Remember having to walk up that little hill to get to our end and having to walk through Chelsea to get there: I asked a cheery booby if we might have a little escorted assistance to get through the animals: ‘if you’re hard enough to come here scouse you can go on your fucking own’.

Cripes.

George Wood – Terry Darracott – Mike Pejic – Mike Lyons – Mark Higgins – Geoff Nulty – Martin Dobson – Andy King – Micky Walsh – Bob Latchford – Dave Thomas.

Andy King, 1-0.

Remember feeling at the end that I sort of wish I could be transported in one of those Star Trek things back to Liverpool, NOW.

We ended up in a carriage full of Chelsea. One got a knife out; ‘some scouse wanker is gonna get this’, me joining in the general merriment.

Earls Court first, wasn’t it. Little ructions here and there.

And then Kensington HS. Bam. Biffo. Wacko Batman. Afterwards I remember seeing someone I knew well from Away days, spitting image of Ronnie Corbet, used to go away with a guy called Indian Joe, and he had been stabbed in his eye, just sitting there on the platform.
And then a second train of Chelsea came in and we just dived on them and they got a good spanking.

Cops and dogs all over the place, and they made us walk from Kensington to Euston, with no escort I think I’m right in saying. There must have been several hundred of us walking through glitzy streets lined with gold, snarling at anyone who looked rich.

An uneventful walk if memory serves until, perfect timing, we get to Euston just as a Spuds special pulled in from Manchester, I think. Little bit of bam, wham, whacko, but the bobbies got it under control.

The train back to Liverpool was like a hospital train. I got away without a scratch. There were some Sunderland boys on the train, just wanting to get anywhere north, they had been at Millwall that day.

Oh, and it was ’84 next time we played them in the smoke, though there was the small matter of them coming to us November ’78 (3-2), the Enclosure was packed with lads …….

Ah, and we went to Erics that night ……

He curries favour with CFC – always wanted to return there my eyeball!!!

He has a dig at Man Utd as they didn't appoint him – he really always wanted to succeed AF.

He exposes DM and to an extent questions his reputation - sour grapes!

He completely hoodwinks everybody by stating the biggest load of tosh ever.

Mourinho (correct spelling I believe) is a self-centred, arrogant man – just like AF who caused the whole affair by announcing his retirement before the end of the season, drawing all the attention to himself and putting DM under unnecessary pressure – another psychologist playing mindgames.

Thankfully it appears we now have an honest manager who will speak his mind, stick to his principles and not play silly games with people.