What's this code for ?
If we somehow scrape Europe he should def be in with a shout, although it will have also been down to the general lack of disparity between clubs. Our failings at home have skewed the outlook on a generally "ok" season.
I think it's also about aesthetics and the 'eye-test' factor. We've picked up a very good amount of points but almost never when tuning in to watch Everton have people seen a side playing good football or dominating the other team, which will skew perceptions a lot, rightly or wrongly.
Daytripper
Player Valuation: £50m
He needs replacing as a starter in my opinion.
A few games felt close to some amount of domination but yes, we've generally played in the wrecking ball method. Also, if I see one more midfielder/defender head an airball back to the opponent, instead of taking it down and playing out when they've clearly got time, I don't know what kind of childish act of violence I'll engage in. It's apparently what they've been conditioned to do and I hate it...'kin hate it. Take it down, control the f'ing game "footballers".
JobForTheMoyes
Player Valuation: £50m
Yeah, due to age. But he’s still very good. We need to phase him out, but at the moment he deserves his place.
Daytripper
Player Valuation: £50m
Hopefully a replacement in the summer
brittcop1
Player Valuation: £8m
Even if he is, its not great player managment to play the old guy in the team every minute of every game...
Zatara
Player Valuation: £100m
Interesting perspective from Sporting Life's website:
David Moyes must be in the Premier League's Manager of the Season conversation
By Ryan Baldi
Football
Wed March 11, 2026 · 2h ago
There is something deeply on-brand about the fact that the job David Moyes is doing at Everton this season has largely slipped beneath the noise.
If the Premier League awards were decided by volume alone, the Scot would barely register. There are shinier stories elsewhere: title races, tactical revolutions, wunderkind coaches and teams with goal tallies that look like telephone numbers.
Yet quietly, methodically and with a very Moyesian refusal to panic, Everton have drifted into the edge of the European conversation.
And it is starting to feel like the sort of achievement that deserves rather more acknowledgement in the Manager of the Season debate than it currently receives.
Context matters. It always does with Moyes.
When the campaign began, Everton were not widely tipped to spend March glancing upwards at the continental places. A solid mid-table season would have been considered respectable; a scrap in the lower half would hardly have surprised anyone.
After all, this was a club that finished 13th the previous season and was still adjusting to new ownership and a new stadium environment.
Yet here we are in early March with Everton sitting eighth in the Premier League table and still within touching distance of the European spots. Their recent 2-0 win over Burnley left them just five points behind sixth place, the sort of proximity that turns an outside hope into a plausible objective.
The immediate temptation is to search for the obvious explanation – a prolific striker, a tactical revolution, a burst of financial muscle. Everton have none of those things.
In fact, their campaign has been defined by the opposite.
David Moyes' Everton are eyeing up the European spots
Start with the attack. Everton’s joint top league scorers have just six goals each this season. That is not a typo and it is not the statistical profile of a side charging toward Europe.
In most Premier League seasons, clubs in the top eight can rely on a forward approaching 15 goals by this stage. Brentford, led by the 18-goal Igor Thiago and who sit one point above Everton, are a prime example of that.
Moyes, by contrast, has had to construct an entire season around the absence of a reliable goal machine.
The result has been a team that spreads responsibility across the pitch. Goals come from midfield runs, set pieces, second balls, the occasional moment of improvisation. Centre-backs chip in. Midfielders arrive late. Forwards share the burden without dominating it.
It is messy, occasionally frustrating and undeniably effective enough.
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall in action for Everton
Then there is the matter of injuries.
Everton’s most glamorous attacking outlet this season was the loan arrival of Jack Grealish, whose early performances hinted at a renaissance. He quickly became a creative hub in Moyes’ system, contributing goals and assists while drifting across the attacking line.
That story ended abruptly when Grealish suffered a foot injury requiring surgery that ruled him out for the remainder of the campaign.
For many sides, losing their primary creative spark halfway through the season would trigger a slide down the table. For Everton it has instead prompted a recalibration.
If anything, Moyes has doubled down on the sort of pragmatic adaptability that defined his first spell at the club.
'Everton remain extremely difficult to beat'
It helps, of course, that Everton remain extremely difficult to beat. Moyes’ team concede barely more than a goal per game while scoring just 1.17 themselves, numbers that reflect a side built on organisation rather than spectacle.
Clean sheets and narrow wins have become their currency.
Everton rarely overwhelm opponents with attacking fireworks. Instead they squeeze games until opportunities appear, trusting discipline and defensive solidity to keep them alive long enough for the moment that decides the result.
That approach has delivered some quietly impressive outcomes. The 1-0 win away to Aston Villa in January was a classic example: controlled, stubborn and ruthlessly efficient.
Victories like that do not dominate highlight packages, but they are precisely how unfancied teams drift toward European contention.
Thierno Barry scores for Everton against Aston Villa
There is also the subtle improvement compared to last season. Everton have collected more points from the same fixtures than they managed a year ago, one of the more notable turnarounds in the division.
It is the kind of incremental progress that tends to be overlooked in a league addicted to instant transformation.
And perhaps that is the key point about Moyes. His work rarely arrives with fanfare. It accumulates.
Week by week Everton have nudged themselves into a position that looked improbable in August. The squad is not packed with superstars, the goals are shared rather than concentrated, and the season has already absorbed a significant injury blow. Yet the team remain organised, competitive and stubbornly difficult to dislodge.
In many ways it feels like a throwback to the Everton Moyes built during his first tenure at the club. Those sides rarely captured the imagination of neutrals either. But they finished high in the table with alarming regularity, powered by a collective understanding of roles and responsibilities.
David Moyes should be in the Manager of the Season conversation
The modern Premier League tends to reward spectacle when it comes to individual accolades. Managers who reinvent systems or unleash high-scoring attacks naturally dominate the conversation.
Yet there is another form of managerial excellence: extracting the maximum from a squad that appears to lack obvious advantages.
That is precisely what Moyes is doing.
Everton may or may not reach Europe by May. The margin between eighth and sixth remains thin and the run-in will test their depth. But the mere fact that the question exists is itself the achievement.
For a club that began the season with modest expectations, coping with injuries and operating without a prolific scorer, the possibility of European football represents remarkable progress. It is the product of consistency, clarity and the sort of understated competence that rarely trends on social media.
Which is exactly why Moyes deserves his place in the Manager of the Season conversation.
Quietly, stubbornly, and very much in his own way, he has earned it.
I see it mentions being 5pts off 6th but doesnt say were also 5pts off 13th which its congratulating Moyes on pushing us on from.
If we get 6th then he's surely a MOTY shout. What if we finish 13th without developing several younger players?
Let's wait until end of the season before we talk about Moyes being a candidate for manager of the year. Dyche was sinking us and it would have been difficult not to have improved on what he had the players doing. Moyes has done well, but he's also overseen a quite frankly disgraceful set of home performances and results. That cancels out our very impressive away form.
We could easily be 13th or 14th within two weeks given what fixtures await us. If we end bottom half, it will have been a terribly underwhelming season, especially given the woeful efforts in both cup competitions.
However, if he can take us from 13th last season to the Europa League (with a 100 million spend), then he's done very well. I don't think a Conference League spot should put him amongst the manager of the year candidates.
We could easily be 13th or 14th within two weeks given what fixtures await us. If we end bottom half, it will have been a terribly underwhelming season, especially given the woeful efforts in both cup competitions.
However, if he can take us from 13th last season to the Europa League (with a 100 million spend), then he's done very well. I don't think a Conference League spot should put him amongst the manager of the year candidates.
Eh, I'm not a fan of how we are playing but the conversation could be had without breaking into hysterical laughter if we finished 6th. On the other hand, one of the last parts of that article is that he gets the max out of all players. I disagree that he's doing that. I think he's done way too much square peg round hole with players this year, especially in defence.
side note tho, the idea that a player would stick with us over Chelsea or City or any of those teams is mostly ludicrous because those teams pay wayyyyyyyyy more than we do in wages. It's not about "THE DRAW" of the club, those teams would double triple or 10x wages of most players.
I find it a bit depressing that getting Everton to 8th is generating talk of Manager of the Season if I’m being honest, it feels condescending and small time to me but hey ho.
As for not being able to attract players over Chelsea or City, we have 2 example’s in Grealish and KDH that counter that. There most certainly are some players who will take the money to sit on the bench in a team bloated with superstars, but clearly not all player have the same mindset. And to be honest I wouldn’t want the others anywhere near Everton.
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Efcjake
Player Valuation: £80m
When they were 13th the year before and have to date improved the most on the previous year's league position is it really?
Seems a bit of a you problem if you think that's small time tbh.
I don't know how signing Grealish and KDH from Chelsea or City when they wanted rid proves we can't attract players over them. What a mental take that is.
You do know if Grealish and KDH wanted to sit on the bench and get paid by City and Chelsea they could have right?
If only we could have snapped our fingers and sold Gbamin, Mina, Tosun, Gomes etc because we wanted rid……the context was about being able attract or retain players from those clubs when they pay more, but because you’ve decided my first comment was a slight against Glorious Leader (which it wasn’t) you’ve got yourself all frothy and excited.
