Why Everton Fans Shouldn't Rejoice At Moyes’ Failure

Moyes is unemployed, and a lot of Everton fans were happy about that, I wasn’t. I was neither happy nor unhappy. How he has acted since he left the club annoyed me immensely but I can forgive that for what he did when he was at the club.

Everton fans in general don’t mind a player or manager leaving to a club more likely to win trophies as long as it’s done in the right way, and they continue to respect the club after they leave. The likes of Joleon Lescott who held the club to ransom and didn’t put in any effort during his last game at the club will never be welcome back. Jack Rodwell was given our best wishes in his move to Man City even though it didn’t work out for him and was recently applauded on his return to Goodison with Sunderland.
David Moyes was also given our best wishes. He received a standing ovation from the Goodison Park faithful during his last game and the appreciation was there. Here was a man that led us from a relegation threatened club to European regulars.

Everton fans, however, are a fiercely proud group. Proud of our club, it’s reputation, it’s history and it’s city. Throughout his tenure he constantly played to this pride with comments about how we don’t sell easily and protecting our big club image. It came with a shock and disbelief then when in came a £25m joint offer for Leighton Baines and Marouane Fellaini which was rightly described as a derisory offer. This was an offer from the man who made scathing attacks against Mark Hughes and his aforementioned pursuit of Lescott. His bid smacked of hypocrisy and arrogance that, as he’d left Everton, they would be free to sell players at an undervalued price, using Man Utd’s huge name to turn the player’s heads and force Everton into selling their best players.

Instead, Martinez pulled off a move that improved the squad, and our bank balance while he was at it. Replacing Fellaini with McCarthy (a player who much more suited his system) for a near £15m profit was huge for the club, and Leighton Baines stayed.
Along with his comments which further disrespected the club and the fans which sung his name for eleven years, the bridges were burnt, and Everton fans were happy to rub the salt in the wounds that began to open up during his Man Utd tenure. It felt like a form of Karma when that tenure ended at Goodison Park after a defeat which meant they could no longer qualify for the Champions League.

This has led to a point where his sacking from Real Sociedad was met with glee from sections of the Everton support. Happy that the man who said usually the only way was down after leaving Everton was himself again finding unemployment after deciding to leave a stable job at a big club.

There was not glee from me however, his behaviour at Man Utd is something which I don’t believe disguises what he did for the club and where he left us. All Everton fans can look back to the end of Walter Smith’s time at the club. A good manager who just didn’t work, Moyes came in and stabilised the club and eventually progressed us to repeated European qualification.
I was happy though when Moyes left, but fearful it may have been a case of ‘better the devil you know’ and I could come to regret missing his stability. The club had grown stale in his management and it was clear we had reached a wall with him that he was never going to be past. His defensive mind-set and cautious ambition worked when we were mid table, but we needed more. I was hoping he left for a few years before he did and there were moments when the majority would have been happy to see him leave during our repeated poor starts.

His departure wasn’t the gut wrenching heartbreak for Evertonians that many made out. There was a feeling of optimism in his exit.

I still however remember the team of those early 2000’s and the football we had to watch. I remember the football of the 90’s before Moyes and the relegations we somehow managed to escape. Moyes through his disciplined management and pragmatic football, along with his genius in the transfer market bought us back to respectability and back to a team that was a prized scalp in the league.

If a team managed by Moyes came to Goodison again I wouldn’t boo, or applaud. He was a great manager for Everton in the context of where we were when he took over. Things may have gone stale under him, he may have chosen his words poorly when left, but if Everton made a different appointment 2001, our Premier League status could have been lost.