The club and playing squads throughout the 1990s made Everton look small time and small minded (obviously excluding the Cup win, but no point in deluding ourselves that we were a great side back then). Final day survivals and finishing around 15th year upon year weakened the perception of the club far more than Moyes ever did.
weakened it far more is quite subjective there, but I don’t it’s outrageous to claim he at least prolonged that perception and it suited him to do so even if it’s a stretch to say he was the main cause (the Walter smith comment is too much for me also)
it’s an opinion I held long before I was on any forums discussing these things, and I wasn’t surprised seeing it repeated on here since I joined 10yrs ago. I stopped listening to and reading his after match comments after a few years as he was constantly making excuses and talking the club down IMO
I think his behavior around the attempted signing of Baines when he left, and the comment about knowing how we work just reinforced this for me. The horrific record in big games and how he would set us up was a fair indicator also that he saw us as a “small” club right up until he left