David Moyes named Premier League Manager of the Month for February

The real prospect of getting relegated with a new stadium and new owners, would have been truly unbearable.

If the Friedkins had of stuck with Dyche, we may have survived purely on the basis of the teams below us being awful, and seemingly doomed anyway, but the mood inside Goodison would have been morbid.

We are now safe, and the lift in atmosphere has been transformational, both on and off the pitch.

I was for most of his tenure, a defender of Dyche, who was dealt a pretty shit hand from day one, but with hindsight, he was dreadfully deficient in tactics and playing style, coupled with his 'blind spots' on certain players.

I think we would have lost O'Brien in the close season, the lad was desperate to play, how did the manager not see at least a modicum of potential?

The close season is massive in terms of adding quality in key areas, ie midfield and attack. Over to you, Moyesy.

Just hope the award doesn't bring with it the usual bad luck for the recipient.

Let's hope not in this case.

“I was for most of his tenure, a defender of Dyche, who was dealt a pretty shit hand from day one, but with hindsight, he was dreadfully deficient in tactics and playing style, coupled with his 'blind spots' on certain players.”

Moyes has been like a breath of fresh air and has taken all the stress, doom and gloom away.

So happy for him to get Manager of the Month. Let's hope it gives a boost to the players for the rest of the season.

I was against the reappointment in the first place. No where near as rabidly bordering on irrational as good old MK and our US corrector-in-chief.

But I would have preferred someone else. I was wrong. I feel so good about us and the season and summer to come under Davey. I'm not quite near IMWT but I'm absolutely chuffed for him.

COYB!

But the Kiss of Death!

It will be too easy to remain comfortably mid-table or thereabouts, with no relegation worries. This was always going to be the telling point regarding Moyes.

I'm no Moyes acolyte, Jerome. Like you, I think, I want to be convinced.

But he did better than "It will be too easy to remain comfortably mid-table or thereabouts, with no relegation worries" in his first 'reign' for the most part.

The summer transfer window and how we start next season will tell us more.

That was always possible at Everton because the capability was always there.Moyes is the favoured Son and was what was wanted in the face of the threat of change by new owners. Moyes naturally has full support.Remember Moyes has tweeted things a bit, but it is largely the same team of players and the same backroom staff that were relegation fodder for seasons.

To move Everton to a competition challenging level will need a significant movement out of their comfort zone, including Moyes.

I don't think I am being ungrateful ; Financial restructured, a new Stadium ( which should have a higher capacity) and Professional Owners .It is aleast what we all should be expecting.Everton moving forward rather than stationary.Competing at the highest level rather than the slippage we all have witnessed over 30 years plus with Premier League survival being the only objective.

Moyes was part of the problem the jury is still out on whether he is part of the solution.

What we have at the moment is the early stages of a reset , hopefully.

Dyche was hired to keep us in the Premier League by fair means or foul. He did it the only way he knows how and he did it under the worst possible circumstances. Most self-respecting managers would not have come within a mile of us at the time.

We (Everton) entered a contract with him with our eyes wide open. If you need the benefit of hindsight to point out the anti-football his team played, you must be new to this footy lark.

Well done, Davey Moyes.

Looking forward to much more to come.

He'd lost the will and any enthusiasm he had left, and he'd lost the players, not to mention any remaining good will amongst the supporters.

Of course everyone will be pleased for Moyes's personal accolade. But that was for last month. All a few are saying is we remain to be convinced moving forward.

We still play deep most of the time, with defensive shape a priority. However, the players appear to have been given more trust in trying to create chances. We have scored in every league game under Moyes apart from his first one.

We've been creating opportunities and looking more dangerous. This in itself makes going the game/watching matches and much more enjoyable experience.

For me personally, this is where the optimism has come from.

Wow.. tad harsh comes to mind..

Moyes has put a player in at RB, whilst Dyche just let him sit on the bench...

Moyes got Beto scoring goals for Everton with a change of style that, funny enough, suited Beto..

Moyes has got Everton scoring goals almost, if not, every game.. he's defo got Everton taking the opposition on..

Take a bow is what I say, he deserves it..

The worst football seen at Goodison in my life time (and probably ever) was when Carlo Ancelotti repeatedly set up to defend against genuinely inferior opposition in thirteen home games and it became the norm to record no shots on target. Yet we still have plenty of people expressing undying gratitude for the way he removed their kecks. "He won stuff at other clubs, you know?"

Moyes Mk 1 bored Goodison rigid. So did Big Sam. Rafa's team would have put a glass eye to sleep.

As far as I'm concerned. Dyche was the only one who could point to anything approaching mitigating circumstances. But apparently he dealt himself the shitty hand.

We could count off the managers one by one. Dyche was doing what it says on his tin, and yes, in difficult, uncertain circumstances, but he lost just about everyone in those last few months.

I'll even put up a lame defence of Benitez, who I absolutely didn't want. But an alleged £1.7M "war chest"?

At least for now, we can see shoots of recovery. Although results are important, it's been good looking forward to matches and being mostly entertained. That's all we ask.

Moyes has taken the same players to a different level. We are all but safe, something that was uncertain before he arrived. I, for one, will always be grateful to Dyche for his efforts but he had to go.

Yes, Moyes was negative for part of his first stay here, but he also built a very good side which played some super football at times. It wasn't always boring!

The first half of that Covid-blighted season was absolutely brilliant in terms of results. Everton were top to the Premier League in October, on the back of winning the first seven games of the season — when was the last time we could say that??? And 2nd on Boxing Day… Ditto.

The cynical assault on James Rodrieguez by a nasty Dutch immigrant gobshite from across Stanley Park which went completely unpunished, and a less well documented attack – probably by more gutter-dewelling kopite trash – on the home of the Everton manager ultimately devasated the performance of our best player and the best manager we will likely ever have.

You'd get laughed out of court for those ones and be warned by the judge for wasting the court's time!

On second thoughts maybe that's what you were doing in your post — having a laugh… were you?

You also forgot to mention that Ancelotti has the 3rd best win ratio of any Everton manager ever, so those suggesting his football was some of the worst seems at odds to results. As you rightly say he also brought one of the most talented footballers to ever grace Goodison – just a pity Covid and Benitez stopped us having the joy of seeing him live.

Congratulations to David Moyes for winning Manager of the Month and hopefully many more to come; only Ferguson and Wenger have won more.

For those complaining about mediocrity, give me 7th place for a few seasons like he mainly achieved in his first spell which he achieved on a shoestring budget. Maybe, with the backing of the Friedkins, he will get us to even higher places than he did the last time.

I hated every minute of Dyche being our manager, the worst football I have seen us play in many a decade, even the useless Mike Walker at least tried to play the game the right way.

But, there's no way Carlo Ancelotti's football was anywhere near as bad as what Dyche served up, especially this season. It was abysmal, devoid any any excitement and made me not want to go the match for the first time in my 50 years attending.

There's a good Reddit here: Link

I am sad it has taken years of us being an utter shit-show of a club (bar one season with Martinez which piggybacked off Moyes success) in order for some to see his worth.

The minority fan base who moaned about Moyes first time round (which probably made up many of those who freaked out when we re-employed him) where the only people in the country who couldn't see what a great job he did in his first stint.

I simply could never believe how some couldn't see that. He has gone away, failed, learnt, grown and come back a better manager, I am sure. He loves the club and gets us; here's to 2½ years of growth and stability, just what we need.

Speaking to The Times, Ratcliffe has said the Glazers made a huge mistake in replacing Sir Alex Ferguson with Moyes.

“Look, I like David Moyes, and I think he's a really good manager, but to go from Sir Alex Ferguson to Moyes is not where I would have gone,” said Ratcliffe.

“Moyes stepped into the shoes of Ferguson, who's won the Premier League 13 times, who won the Champions League twice and then you're handing over to a guy that has never managed big players and had never won anything. He's not necessarily got the personality to stand in front of them all.”

James also played in the 0-1 home defeat to Leeds.

The 0-1 home defeat to West Ham

The 0-2 home defeat to Newcastle

The 0-2 home defeat to Fulham

The 1-3 home defeat to City

The 0-1 home defeat to Sheff U

He also played in the 1-1 draw with Leicester and the 1-1 draw against Palace (scored in both games if memory serves)

I think he missed the 1-2 home defeat to Villa.

Good job covid meant the fans were not allowed at these home games, because if they were paying to see this non-football. Carlo would have been ran out of town long before he snuck out into the night.

Imagine the uproar after the game when Carlo's multi-million pound outfit were taken to school by By Dyches merry band of carthorses ?

He has transformed a team in deep despondency a single point above the relegation zone to one that is safe from relegation, and he has rightly been awarded Manager of the month for February.

Stop moaning and get behind our outstanding manager! He's simply the best!

You said everyone could see the great job he did, but I saw the death of an English institution, being replaced with a fanbase that suddenly began to accept mediocrity.

I've been watching Everton for 50years and only one man has been given more than 4 years without giving our club, real success.

I watched today, I don't expect much considering our current personal, but it was painful watching Beto dropping so deep, considering he wasn't dropping in behind the ball.

Moyes has done a terrific job since he came in; let's judge him on what he does in the future, eh? You never know, with a dose of optimism, it may be good? He won a trophy at West Ham which nobody else did since 1980.

Yes I know you (and others) will only remember a single misplaced quote like "knife to a gunfight" and hold it against him for over a decade. I know you will blame him (bizarrely) for not making us a Champions League team during his tenure.

Last time I checked, he didn't ask for Billy Bullshit to be his Chairman, he didn't ask for a crumbling wreck of a stadium which required us to move. He didn't ask for all the mismanagement (tactically and financially) prior to Bill and also his own appointment. He didn't ask for the weight of crowd expectation (built up over our history) to be projected towards him for failing to get into the top 4 on a shoe-string.

He also didn't make the decision to pay him the handsome wage (allegedly) that he got which is still held against him a decade later (also bizarrely!).

Moving away from Tony and towards the larger contingent that can't let it go and can't allow themselves to get behind him. He is here, he is doing a fine job with bare bones, for goodness sake get behind him and let it go.

Check the ToffeeWeb archives and you will see I stopped going to Goodison, after we lost to Wigan in the cup, simply because I believed that MOYES WAS IN BED WITH BILL KENWRIGHT - and he had our deceitful chairman under his thumb because a lot of people were very happy with the club in those days.

I wasn’t happy, with the the clubs direction, and although I didn’t believe that the David Moyes, who departed for Manchester United, was a bad manager either, but I remember my father saying he had written a letter to Moyes once and described him as a plodder, and depending on your view of a plodder, (I actually gave Moyes a little bit more credit than this) I don’t think my father was far wrong.

I hope Moyes wins us a trophy, especially because he has got the Everton connection that has helped our previous trophy winning managers, but I don’t really want to live in the past (as much as a lot of the game at the top level now despairs me) and whatever way I look at it David Moyes represents a lot of our very (imo) unfortunate past.

I hope he realises that he was only given so long because he worked under our worst ever chairman, a chairman without any real ambition, befitting the once great name of Everton Football Club.

I hope Moyes has changed and his final ambition is to deliver silverware to the very loyal Evertonians, because that should always be the nature of the professional game, for a club like Everton.

You can’t always win, but you can give your all trying. I don’t think I’m asking too much having such a view of my club

For me, he did build some good teams at Everton, but was a master in the art of playing down expectation, which is where, in different ways, his relationship with the Chairman wasn't healthy.

Wigan in the cup was also the one that done it for me, after a couple of years of increasing frustration at not being able to progress. And that was down to a combination of the club and the manager.

Water under the bridge now as they say, although many will maybe forgive, but not forget, the manner in which he left Everton. Not why, just how he handled it. Evertonians are like elephants. They don't forget.

Come further a couple of years Everton playing City at Goodison they destroyed us first half we were lucky to off losing by the only goal, they could have 3 or4, then after a few minutes of the second still not much effort, the crowd took over we’d had enough, Osman scored a brilliant header from around the penalty spot in the Park End, don’t know if that was the equaliser or the winner but we had a go and won 2-1 or did we score another one.

The moral of the story and Moyes’s first time round he was more scared of losing than winning in far too many games but after ten games here now, some fans are raving over him and that’s fair enough if they like him talk about it but don’t be having a go at fans like me who are holding fire and waiting to see how he continues.

Like Dyche and others before him he is having to play with a threadbare squad which has got worse with injuries and even when it has the full complement of players it is very limited in the skillful players we’ve got, so wait and see how the team sorts itself out in the future.

Everton have played eleven games since he came back won four, drew five and lost two, seven of them at home, I’m very happy with the points collected but unlike some I won’t be eating any humble pie any time soon nor will I be criticising him until he has a decent squad of players to use. Although at Anfield next game I hope plays the team with the same determination to have a go and try and win the game as we did a few weeks ago at Goodison.

If you work in any senior level in an organisation, you become aware quickly if there are issues with decision-making, financial management, operating norms and culture.

If you sit on a fat salary for a decade while knowing that, then you lack ethics in my book.

He has also by an measure unsuccessful (and lucky) in not winning a trophy in 11 years, but remaining in his job. That is because the arrangement he had with Mr Kenwright suited them both.

That doesn’t mean that I want anything other than success for Mr Moyes this time around. He seems genuinely delighted to get one final big job.

He seems, older, wiser and more comfortable in his own skin, and if he can find it in himself to be less cautious in his approach and tactics you never know.

I was at that match you refer to. We were trailing 1-0, got an equaliser and then little Leon leapt as if he had bounced off a trampoline to be Lescott in the air and seal the win. I was in the corner of the Main Stand near the Park End and directly in line with it.

Moyes was overly cautious most of the time during his first tenure, but like you, I'm not getting carried away just yet. Let's get another traumatic season done and see what the next one brings.

Let's hope he has matured as a manager, I'm of the same opinion. I'm delighted at the turn around in results and securing the much needed points that we didn't look like we could buy. He, like most Everton managers over the past few decades, has had to operate under the constraints of a badly run club, but could have been more ambitious when it mattered.

I'm going to Anfield with my usual optimism and confidence. I hope the manager and players are the same. No fear and be brave Everton. I'd rather lose fighting than be submissive from the start. They can be beaten if we get at them.

I spoke to Tony yesterday and told him I'm not being escorted to Anfield. I'll make my way there of my own accord!