Personally i dont mind slipping under the radar of the press, in many ways keeping a low profile helps us. The facts are we the most successfull club outside the top four in the last few seasons, consistently qualifying for Europe in the past two seasons and the only club to break into the sky 4 albeit once in recent memory, despite the milions being thrown around by Spurs, City, Newcastle and City. No longer to we have to argue that we are a big club based on our tradition, fan base, and looking at our illustrious past. When was the last time you heared the term sleeping giant used in relation to us?
I think the low profile and expectation level helps us in the transfer market. Remember last summer people were wishing for Richardson and Nugent and we got Pienaar and Yak and spent close to 30 mill. Admit it none of us were expecting that! In fact the clubs strategy in the transfer market is so good that even its most loyal devotees, in us as the fans, question our own ambition in the transfer market on here on a daily basis with the the more negative having a go at the board and the more optimistic being quietly confident. In fact no one really has a scooby, but for me its the only way to work within the transfer window.
What i find fascinating when i study football, is that when certian jobs come up im talking the Chelsea, Spurs, Newcastle, City jobs, etc, Moyes is never really considered in the media hype as being linked with them. Let me explain this, he is the most successfull manager pound for pound outside the sky four in recent years and broke the goldon circle once, a wish of every club with money to throw around. When jobs have come available at high profile clubs you could always rely on certain managers in the last few years being linked like, Alladyce, Curbishly, O Neill, and more recently Hughes, some of those links have been more tenuous then others but the fact is these links are part of a media induced agenda to move good managers at some clubs to what they feel are better clubs for the purpose of making stories out of it.
So why not Moyes the facts speak for themselves he is the most sucessfull manager outside the sky four, and his contract situation is not as complicated as many others, why dont the media try and destabilise or create unrelenting speculation about his position at our club, or clubs who are thorwing around hundreds of millions annually come in for him, given that every second week there is this manager and that manager coming out and saying they want to emulate the work David Moyes has done in his time at Everton.
The truth is wheather the media begrudge it to us or not we are a big club, and there are very few that can compete with us in a lot of ways, in terms of tradition, history, fanbase, success, and more recently stability and an offering a reasonable opportunity of success, im trying not to be biased to us saying that but its a fact. Moyes would be as nuts to leave us as we would be to let him go there are very few rungs on the ladder ahead of us, and in many ways he knows this and said has said it.
So forget the odd sniping article by some no mark journo, who trying to get the shekels together for a week in benidorm, be strong in your own anaylse and beleif of our club and what we have acheived in the last few seasons, the majority of the media do, albiet begrudgeingly because we are not throwing wads of cash about, no board room drama, our manager positioon is consistent, and they havnt a clue about who we are trying to sign, in fact we make reporting about our club very difficult because we are so well run that must be frustrating for the gutter press given our huge fan base hence the cirticism, when there is no drama they try to create it.
On the Ashavein front, paitence is key, i am not naieve enough, to think that if we are intrested an approach has not already happened at least to the player and nothing will be decided untill the end of the yo yo's. You will find with Zenit allowing him to go, a fee is public knowledge, so i beleive it is about making a proposal to the player, convinceing him and letting him choose, so if we are intrested we are in there with a few others, i have an understanding that Moyesy has been out at the tournament a few times already!
