adziom

I'm still behind Roberto. He has the potential to be an excellent coach if he improves on the weak areas of his management - game management and substitutions, defensive coaching, squad rotation. What is a concern that these weak areas have showed very little sign of improving. Some of them, in fact, have looked worse. I don't want us to become another typical football club though and sack managers when they could be given more time. Don't look at other clubs and think "this underachievement would never be accepted at Spurs etc." - clubs who sack manager after manager are the ones getting it wrong, we should stick with this guy until it becomes 100% conclusive that he cannot take us forward.

No contest here, poor Rom. He's becoming the man to lead us into a new era. He's leading, the rest of the club isn't following. Unfortunately if someone comes in for him in January or summer and he or his agent asked me why he should stay, I don't think I could give him an answer.

We'll either get outplayed and lose or look the better side but find a way to lose. Another very winnable match if you look at our teamsheet vs theirs but I'm fed up of using that excuse to be optimistic this season only to be disappointed again and again.

Nor do I, although Donovan's contract expires before January unless the situation has changed there. I always understood that we never made a serious bid for him because the MLS would never let their poster boy leave. Although as we've "come to an agreement with MLS", there's every possibility that Donovan was a part of the discussions. Let's not get our hopes up though!

I expect its more about freeing up the wages than the transfer fee. Maybe the agreement with the MLS involves Landon Donovan moving in the opposite direction?

If Moyes goes to Spurs, its a sideways move for all parties. If you were going into a cup final tomorrow, you'd take their team, but what about in 3 years when Bale, Modric, Van Der Vaart and Adebayor all piss off to earn bigger bucks elsewhere, and Friedel and Parker are retired? You've got a crap squad then. I can't believe people are so fine with the prospect of this to be honest. Bielsa? Bilic? Yeah right. We'll end up with some crater faced relegation fodder like McCarthy or McLeish. All the managers that even had a hint of potential about them have already moved on - Rodgers, Lambert, Hughton.

So Redknapp was confirmed to leave a few hours ago and now Moyes, at 11pm in the middle of summer when he's probably on holiday, with the league season starting again in just TWO MONTHS, has already found time to hold talks with them? Right....

Pienaar, Fellaini, Jelavic and Osman tore apart most defences in the latter part of the season. Fellaini drove us forward, Pienaar and Osman found the gaps and Jelavic stuck it in the net. I think reuniting that front 4 is worth £6 million. If we had someone decent to play there instead then I'd understand people finding that a bit steep, and it is a bit cheeky of Spurs to ask for that after what they paid for him, but that's life. If we don't get Pienaar on our left side, we're looking at either Gueye, who is generally a passenger unless we're dominating the game, or Osman with Coleman on the right which also doesn't scream out "creative force that can challenge for the top 6", or someone that we'd have to scout and also pay money for, who could end up going somewhere else which would waste or time. I understand that Pienaar would come back here in a heartbeat once the fee is right. If its a choice between 1) Pienaar for £6M 2) Younger alternative for £4M + being unproven + settling in period + might not fit in as well + risk of being beaten to the signing by other teams. I'd choose Pienaar personally.

Everyone goes on about Spurs and how Moyes would go there if Redknapp left for England and he got the chance but I don't see it. Yeah they've got a good squad, if Bale and Modric stay, if they can keep Adebayor, if Van der Vaart can stay fit, if their centre backs can string together 3 matches without getting injured, if Walker was as good as MOTD and Sky Sports reckon he is, if Parker and Friedel were 5 years younger......

I actually agree with this and I like that Moyes is thinking of it. Fellaini was excellent going forward since the introduction of Gibson last season. Most people on here seem to believe that Fellaini is wasted as an attacking midfielder because he's such a good anchor man, but I think he is our best central attacking player as well as our best defensive midfielder. If Rodwell and or Barkley can develop then I certainly wouldn't lose any sleep about playing one of them alongside Gibson to allow Felli to get forward. The Pienaar/Fellaini/Osman/Jelavic front 4 is/was one of the most potent I can remember in recent history, and even if we do lose a little bit defensively, I think we can afford to, with 3 quality centre backs, not to mention Duffy coming through also....

I think Cuellar's quite good. I don't know whether his lack of game time this season was down to injury or what but on a free transfer he's certainly worth looking at - if Duffy goes out on loan again that is.

Kalou and Bosingwa available on free transfers, although I doubt they'd come to Everton given the probable wage cuts.

I think Holt deserves credit for what he's achieved. I don't think he'll emulate the same goalscoring record next season or ever again though, and I certainly don't see the point in us being linked with him.

Was tempted to go for Heitinga and Distin but they haven't played that much together and I was conscious of over-rating the latest thing I've seen. I went for Jags and Lescott, not just for their excellent defensive partnership, but also for their threat from set pieces

He said a top half finish would be a reasonable success, but he also said that we wouldn't particularly be celebrating finishing 7th, because, aside from pride, there's no difference between finishing 7th and 17th, unless 7th gets you into Europe but even then, Europa League isn't really a massive deal these days. At the start of the season, having lost Arteta, and having brought in no new talent, I wouldn't have said 7th is the minimum we can expect. I also wouldn't say our squad is even close to the likes of Arsenal, Spurs or Liverpool. Van Persie, Arteta, Vermaelen, Van Der Vaart, Bale, Suarez, Gerrard, yeah they're only 2 or 3 players from each squad that are especially better than our players but they do make a big difference. However, with the squad we have for next season, IF we sign Pienaar and IF we keep our other key players and Fergie keeps his greasy bacon hands off Baines, there's no excuse to finish below any of the nothing teams like Villa, Sunderland, Stoke or Fulham. At the same time though I still think we're one or two quality players away from challenging the top 5/6 on a consistent basis. Newcastle managed it this year but an absolutely massive part of that was Ba and Cisse. We were in for Ba until we couldn't pay his wages weren't we? That's a classic example of how Moyes is held back. It also remains to be seen if Newcastle have really made that step up with relatively little investment (still more than us), or whether it was a one-off season where they got a bit of luck and were able to take advantage of the worst Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool sides we've seen for years.

Adam Davies Phil Neville Tony Hibbert Phil Jagielka Leighton Baines Jack Rodwell Ross Barkley Leon Osman Adam Forshaw Conor McAleny Jose Baxter Probably better than what will be fielded against France.

He said all BUT the big money clubs

Why was 7th a minimum, with a worse squad against better opposition, when that's where we finished last season?

We're going round in circles because every time we sign a Fellaini or a Jelavic, we either have to sell a Lescott or an Arteta to feed the banks or we lose a Cahill or a Distin to age. Arsene Wenger's a stubborn, one dimensional bastard too. The difference is, he's a stubborn, one dimensional bastard with the stadium and the budget to attract class players to his side more than once every two seasons. Moyes has his faults, so does every manager. If you want to sack a manager who has faults (as the thread title suggests) then the chairmen may as well get down there in the dugout and do it himself. You need to take the bad with the good, and with Moyes I think the overall package is worthwhile. If he can iron out his flaws, then even better. If we can keep the current squad together, keep Baines, Heitinga, Fellaini, even Jags, and Moyes can save up enough pocket money to bring Pienaar back, there will be absolutely no excuse to start last season like we did this one. All we need is a replacement for Cahill and some actual cover at left back and I see no reason why we can't compete for the top 6 or perhaps even better over the next few years. The only problem is then though that we'll have to be spending money over the next two or three seasons to replace Distin, Neville, Osman, Pienaar, Hibbert due to their age, and any players like Fellaini who may get tempted away from the club.

What exactly were those options? Here's a list of our attacking players pre-January Coleman, Osman, Barkley, Cahill, Bilyaletdinov, Vellios, Stracqualursi, Gueye, McFadden, Drenthe, Anichebe, Saha. Anyone that expects a Champions League place with that mess of kids, misfits and cripples needs a rethink. Yes, we've ended the season well, why? Because we've had Jelavic, Fellaini (playing in an advanced role partly thanks to the acquisition of Gibson), Donovan and Pienaar scoring or setting up pretty much every goal we've scored since they arrived at the club. Why people think we should be qualifying for the Champions League is beyond me. The fact the we managed it in 2005 is a near miracle in itself. Also I can't see how anyone can say that Chelsea (Mata, Drogba, Ramires, Cole, Cech, Sturridge), Arsenal (Walcott, Song, Arteta, Vermaelen, Sagna) and Man Utd (Rooney, Valencia, Nani, Scholes, Young, Vidic) are even comparable to our squad.

Keeping Moyes isn't "accepting mediocrity". If we get rid of Moyes for some unproven one season wonder, there's about a 10% chance that he'll do better, win us a Carling Cup or finish 6th instead of 7th, but about a 90% chance we'll do worse, and perhaps even end up in a relegation scrap. Moyes isn't the thing that's stalling progress at the club, it's the lack of investment. Moyes proved (again) this January that with money to spend, he can take us forward. Unfortunately though, he doesn't always have money to spend. Until a world class manager, capable of waving a magic wand over the football club and suddenly delivering Champions League football and silverware every year without having any significant money to spend, A) Comes out of nowhere and For some reason is interested in managing Everton, any talk of getting rid of him is simply ridiculous.

But Big Sam also failed to deliver anything above mediocrity at Blackburn and Newcastle.... I can't believe anyone would put the club's long term future at risk, risk us doing a Leeds/Portsmouth/Notts Forest, just because consistent top half finishes and overachievement, with occasional European qualification, on little to no budget is so unbearably "mediocre".

Not really, I don't really see where you're getting that from. Sam Allardyce has proven himself to be a mediocre manager at a range of football clubs, David Moyes has proven that he is far from mediocre. My point was that if Moyes was doing a better job and getting everything right like some people seem to expect him to, he'd be right up there with the world's management elite, which is a calibre of manager that only the most deluded of Everton fans could dream of attracting to our club. Tell me, who exactly could we get out there, that would actually be interested in managing a club with an aging squad, a decrepit stadium and no transfer budget, who would, not maybe, but definitely, do a better job than David Moyes has done? I don't understand these people who say "it's worth trying somebody else". If it doesn't come off, we could get relegated. It happened to Leeds and Newcastle so we're far from immune to that possibility.

Even managers like Mourinho, Guardiola, Ferguson and Wenger make mistakes and have their flaws though. If you want Moyes to get everything right all the time then you're expecting a manager, who is still relatively young, and managing an upper mid-table Premiership side to trump the elite managers in world football. He can be infuriating tactically and one dimensional, but you can't complain about his eventual end product, which is what matters at the end of the day.

Moyes is treading water because he has to sell to buy, and in the mean time, all the players that he bought a few years ago reach the wrong side of 30. Many, in fact most managers would have struggled to keep Everton in the league with the squad Moyes inherited ten years ago and the resources he has received since. One season, the guy took a squad with players like Carsley, Pistone, Weir, Stubbs, McFadden, Kilbane, Marcus Bent, all players who were barely even good enough for lower Premiership sides, into the Champions League, and for me, that has got to be one of the greatest achievements of any manager over the past ten years, regardless of our elimination in the qualifiers. But let's get to the present and look at this season. The most popular shouts for "someone else" to come in and do a better job are Lambert, whose Norwich side relies on a fat lump of a goalscorer and a pool of mediocre Championship players to win matches, and Rodgers, who gets over-creditted with Swansea's meteoric rise through the leagues, when actually they've been playing like that and winning promotions since Roberto Martinez managed them. Meanwhile, David Moyes had to start this season having lost Pienaar and Arteta, and with an attack of Saha, who was shitter than anybody could have conceivably predicted until he left in January, Vellios, who was 18, and Stracqualursi, an unheard of Argentine who, despite all his hard work and guts, has proven to be little better than mediocre. Yet, he pulled off some astute business in January, getting rid of Bilyaletdinov and Saha, and bringing in Pienaar, Donovan, Gibson and Jelavic, signings who were met with varying levels of support from the fans, but who have unanimously proved to be a raging success. On top of that, we've had a brilliant end to the season, he's made some key tactical calls that many of us were sceptical about that have paid off - playing Hibbert over Duffy alongside Heitinga against City, moving Fellaini forward to support the attack in spite of his excellent defensive work, used Anichebe effectively as an impact sub, which in itself earned us a total of 5 points at West Brom, Villa and Wigan - and after the dust settled we've ended up 7th, comfortably ahead of Liverpool, Fulham and some other pretty decent sides with good players. Despite the failure in the Semi Final, which I personally put down to the players making errors and bottling it, more than Moyes picking what was clearly the best line up available to us, it's been a good season. Sure, like the man himself has said, we're 7th, not in Europe, and without silverware, but remember to put the season into perspective, where we were at the start of the season and how he's turned it around since.