I think the truth is somewhere inbetween. dave is right and wrong about it being foolish to judge an available candidate by listening to fans. If you ignore the fans and their opinions you can lead yourself to an inevitable backlash. It is also churlish to dismiss any experience or feedback about a candidate who you are about to pay a kings ransom. The fans opinion is just not top of the list for assessment criteria.
Plenty of employers now for much lesser jobs will look at a candidates online profile, so at the very least they should have looked at what Wolves fans have said so they could be forarmed with interview questions. (Maybe they did?)
Whether or not he did a good job at Wolves is up for debate, but Wolves did not see fit to sack him for many years so at the very least you would expect an experienced and competent man. However, clearly we were not fully dilligent in our approach of hiring him, very quickly it became clear he was the wrong man for Delia and Michael. Why did they not forsee some of the problems? Perhaps because they are generally useless? As I recall, at the time it was said that they knew and respected Moxey from before the appointment, so I think they let the buddy bit get in the way of actually thinking whether he was the person they wanted to work with, could work with and might take City where they wanted to go. To play devils advocate, an experienced candidate like Moxey may interview very well and then once in the role the awful truth must have come out. Might someone else have seen through his interview? We don't know. But we do know hiring him was a mistake, so good interview or not, it cannot be anything other than a costly mistake.
Moxey was no different to any other chairman, some transfers were good, others bad without looking I doubt his decision making on this was any worse than most.
With respect to McNally, Between him and Bowkett, I believe we had the best team running City. Were they perfect? Of course not, but that doesn't change that it was a predominantly successful stint with the club generally on an upward trejectory. They were a gamble at the time, Moxey was much more of a known quantity and as such, I would think D & M should have known that perhaps he was wrong for them.
Bah!