I've never understood why people say he's done it with a "medium sized budget", he's got a lower net spend during his time at Everton than teams like Stoke, Sunderland, Fulham and West Brom, yes he has spent a few quid on a few players here and there but he has usually had to offload players to be able to do it, the fact he's managed to keep the team in the top 8 for most of his time in charge (except for two season I think) with that small of a net spend is very impressive.
I would say that outside of the usual top sides, La Liga is a lot worse than the Premier League in terms of strength in depth, some of the Spanish teams may have one or two players that stand out but overall the squad depth of the lower teams in Spain is pretty bad to be honest, especially in defense, some of the first eleven defenders in the bottom half teams in Spain are dire.
Moyes is a good manager. I think Spurs would have been the next step for him but now that they've got AvB I think that door is closed. I can see him staying for a long while. He knows how to win things. But I don't think he's done enough to warrant a gamble on him from Arsenal, Chelsea, United, City. All those clubs can attract a fair bit better than him.
Is it really any more of a gamble than paying a huge amount of money to bring a big named foreign manager to the league, many of which fail to live up to expectations?
BR has done a very average job. Liverpool finished 8th last season under a manager who was completely out of his depth. Rodgers has taken over the team, spent a bit of money, failed to win a single game against a team above them in the league and made great strides to get Liverpool to....8th. The highest they'll finish is 7th. Whoop for BR!
I think so And it's not so much a 'gamble' that he'll do badly. I just don't think there's much hope of any significant success.
Come to think of it, Celtic is the ideal job for Moyes. If he proves himself in Europe with them then it could be a stepping stone
I think this is pretty much always the case in England, and indeed all top leagues. You have two or three good sides with the rest being fairly average, all that changes is the quality of the top sides. I think a lot of that stems from the fact that SAF enjoys the challenge of our league so much, so is never really ruthless and builds an outstanding team unless he faces outstanding competition. It took Arsenal winning the double to spur him to build the treble winners, and Mourinho at Chelsea to build the 07-09 vintage, so until City actually pull their finger out and perform as they should be able to on paper I don't think he'll feel the pressure to win. He's had hardly any budget - the majority of the money he spends is raised from player sales. andersred did a very good analysis of this last year, showing that most of Everton's transfers consist of stage payments so they rarely actually spend what their 'net spend' figure indicates for a current season. For example, the stage payments of the transfer of Andy Johnson were such that they hadn't paid off the full fee before they started receiving money from the sale. Overall, they have the second lowest net spend of any club that has been in the PL for all of the last ten years (since Moyes joined). Only Arsenal have a lower net, and that is more than countered by their wage bill which is easily double that of Everton's. That all depends on how he works out at a new club - many would have probably said the same about Paisley when Shankly retired and look how that worked out! Until Moyes gets a chance at a club with a large, or even medium, budget it's impossible to be sure how he'll do.
Agreed. Although I think it's less about the challenge as it is wanting consistency and waiting for the right players to become available. No need to 'gamble' unless the threat becomes unavoidable. a couple of years ago someone did the same anaysis and he had an average finish of eigth on the 8th highest net spend. that's what I was thinking when I said that. Admittedly I hadn't checked what they did in the last 2 years. A couple of big money outs and very little in has changed things quite a bit. He's had budget almost his entire career so this one comes down to opinion and timing for me. agreed. but you could say that about anyone really. I think Celtic and Spurs would be great shouts for him.
That's a good example of how the net spend can be misleading - his spend figures a few years back would have been boosted by Fellaini and Yakubu, both of which were bought on part instalment deals which had to be funded by later sales of Lescott and Arteta with no real replacements. He's had budget, but so has every manager. Wenger is the only one to have managed over a long period with absolutely no money put in, and that is more down to his own choice. Even in the darkest of LFC's "zero net spend" days Benitez still had budget to buy Johnson and Aquilani. In fact, I've always thought that a good demonstration of Moyes' quality - one or two seasons without a big budget and Liverpool dropped down to 7th in the table, and have yet to recover despite spending upwards of £60 million, yet that's exactly the same level Moyes has managed to maintain without a big budget for a decade. Besides which, given Everton had managed an average of around 16th over the eight seasons prior to Moyes' arrival, achieving an average of eighth without additional financial support can only be seen as a success imo.
I think Moyes is a good manager but we can both agree the timing of the stats can paint a different picture Liverpool's problem was more down to putting all the cash into the first XI and it was an ace first XI. This wasn't done recklessly, we thought we were building and going forward and would continue roughly the same level of spend to keep the depth. What no one knew was the owners were skint and in a debt spiral due to the acquisition loans they put on the club. A couple of years of negative spend (selling off the depth past the first XI effectively) and all it took was heavy injuries to the first XI and we dropped to 7th. That was compounded with mistakes like Roy after that. We could (would IMO) have bounced back to 4th the next season pretty easily had we kept Rafa.
