Everton stupid to mock Moyes ‘clamour’ when Iraola and Glasner are right there | OneFootball

As the man who once listed Mark Travers among “the most exciting talents in European football” David Moyes would continue to platform in his relentless “desire to champion” youth, it was interesting to hear Everton CEO Angus Kinnear’s review of the season last week.

“As we look back on the season, we can be ‘happily dissatisfied’,” he said. “We were able to stop looking over our shoulder by Christmas with relegation fears all but extinguished and, as we enter the last two fixtures, we still have something to play for, with European qualification continuing to be fiercely contested.”

It does, to be fair, continue to be fiercely contested. Just not by Everton, who went into the international break on the back of a 3-0 victory over Chelsea which put the Toffees three points off the Champions League places, and have come out of it on a six-game winless run to slide them into the bottom half and render even the Conference League basically unreachable.

Moyes admitted “we didn’t look like a European team at times today” and “are probably not quite ready” to compete on the continent after their latest defeat.

And that would be fine if they hadn’t just been beaten and leapfrogged by newly-promoted Sunderland, who really shouldn’t be ready but looked far more so than an imploding Everton.

The champion of youth ended the game with Seamus Coleman (37), Michael Keane (33) and James Tarkowski (33) in the backline, with late substitutions and a curious fragility costing them again.

In this depressing six-game run, Everton have either scored the opening goal or conceded it and equalised, only to draw or lose. Moyes was right that they had “messed up big time” against Sunderland, but it was merely part of a larger trend of avoidable lapses.

It lends itself to a potentially biblical Be Careful What You Wish For scenario.

Few managers embody that warning quite like Moyes – and West Ham make for an unavoidably uncomfortable case study in ignoring it.

But with Andoni Iraola being courted by Crystal Palace, Oliver Glasner on the market and *shudder* managers not proven in the Premier League out there somewhere, for Everton to not consider their options would be predictably and cripplingly unambitious.

It is undoubtedly the way they will go. “Whilst the media and other fanbases clamour for frequent managerial change,” Kinnear said last week, “we value the stability that David brings and the ability this gives the whole club to plan for the long term.”

And there is plenty to be said for that. After three successive seasons of battling for Premier League survival, the groundwork has been laid for Everton to push on.

The call, then, should be to thank Moyes for his impeccable work before shaking hands, parting ways and trying to build on those foundations with a more progressive coach.

It damns Everton that no-one, even just for a second, thinks they actually will.