Marius57
Player Valuation: £60m
As Moyes showed, the squad could have pushed on last season. Considering in half a season he got us 31 points despite Dyche having talked us and played us into another relegation battle. Let’s not pretend that the squad wasn’t capable of progressing from getting 48 points the year before when the evidence shows it quite clearly was.During his final season though there were posters on here demanding he pushed on from 48 points (and circa 12th position without points deduction) that we’d achieved the season before. All we did that summer though was sell Onana and Godfrey Dobbin and bring in Ndiaye Iroegbunam and OBrien plus some loans (Broja injured, Mangala and Lindstrom). The narrative was that he was a terrible manager if he didn’t move us forward.
We’re now in a position though where a lot of people are saying 12th would be ok because we’ve been in relegation battles the last 4 seasons and need some slow stability. This is after over 100mill was spent on the squad with all the best players kept from last season.
This for me is the hypocrisy in expectations. I don’t think anyone was arguing to keep Dyche beyond the ownership change or his contract end, but honestly the bile towards him on the eve of his final season with us was absolutely ridiculous given what he’d navigated us through in the previous 18 months. Grown adults absolutely melting down and venting their spleen because Dyche didn’t start Roman Dixon first game of the season (where’s he now by the way?). I’ve never seen anything like it.
Moyes is a much better manager than Dyche in my opinion, but David Moyes had no interest in joining us in Jan 23 when he was managing West Ham in Europe and we were 19th in the prem with 18 games to go getting punted for 4 goals every game with one of the worst squadsin the league, an injury crisis, and a horrendous fixture list left. Not to mention the points deductions that followed and the selling of a big asset every window. We couldn’t have attracted a manager of his talent, so we got the one manager who would take the job in amongst all the pressure that was on him.
This club owes a massive debt to Sean Dyche because we could quite easily be in the championship or worse now leading our new stadium at best and doing a fire sale of every decent player we have to keep the administrators from the door. The Friedkins and 100 mill war chests would be an absolute pipe dream. But yeah you were a bit bored with the footy for a bit and he didn’t play Roman Dixon…
We should be targeting 10th + this season realistically. But actually, 12th would be an improvement on last season because of Dyches management and where he left us.
	









