Yeah so that bucket and the cement, are you pouring or should I go first? Shows you how expectations have been managed to the extent, that even when he went to Man Utd and had the budget, he failed. But the mindset by some is, let's go back, we were competing then.
That wasn't pride, success or even competing, it was a systematic dismantling of our position within the game and the lowering of expectations after the boardroom disaster management of the 90's.
In that time thankfully we had a real true blue in Royle and at the start in Harvey who tried their best but it's time to look outside, former players though. If the Board have any sense, they'll look at the top four in the poll above and listen to the supporters for a change.
You need to divorce Moyes from the board mate. The reason we haven't competed in the premier league is because of Bill Kenwright and the board no one else. They were not in any way ready for the premier league and when it began we were a walking relegation time bomb likely to go off at any point.
It is my firm belief that had Moyes not been appointed we would have remained that way. We were on our way down in 02/03. All that happened in the following years were our best players getting sold every year and loan players coming in. Selling Arteta just to service a loan was criminal. Had we had a fraud like Martinez in charge we would have gone down and who knows what that would have meant given our precarious financial position. We could have been Portsmouth or Leeds.
Instead the entire house of cards was held together by one person. A manager who went out and found genuine top 6 quality time and time again for bargain basement prices. Not only did he achieve a brilliant feat of keeping us in the league as the board floggedour assets, he had us up competing for Europe and going on cup runs.
Short memories led to fans thinking that it was 1987 everything was boss then suddenly Moyes ruined everything. Absolute rubbish. As an Evertonian I will be forever grateful for David Moyes. Times are different now, the financial picture is incomparable, maybe he's not the manager we need now, but in 2003 he was THE manager we needed and single habdedly put this club back on an even footing. You only have to see how teams who when Moyes started were miles ahead of us Leeds, Villa, Newcastle even with a load of money, their pick of players and managers, have declined horrifically. At the same time some of our fans were moaning about the glass ceiling and only beating City out of the top 4.
I honestly find criticism of the majority of Moyes' time at Everton utterly embarassing. To say he 'systematically dismantled our position in the game' is absolutely erroneous. If you want a real definition of that look no further than our current manager undoing a decade of good work taking us back to the lower half of the premier league, disconnecting the fans from the players, making Goodison a laughing stock, languishing miles behind our neighbours. Just like the dark days of the first decade of premier league football. We could have been stuck with a joker like him in the exact moment that we were probably at the most vulnerable financial position in the entire history of the club. Instead we got a manager who gave us Europe on peanuts when others were spending loads, like coming fifth in a formula one race driving a clapped out mini. Yet it wasn't good enough for some was it.
Thank you David Moyes for saving Everton.
