Seeing the trouble Bolton are in now it makes me thankful every day this guy walked into our club.
We were on an absolute financial knife edge. Mortgaged up to our eye balls with vibrac loans. One wrong turn and we could have easily been where Bolton are now. No Moshiri, no new stadium, no dreams of European football, no Brazilian internationals. Had we taken a wrong turn at any point we could have gone down never to return.
Instead Moyes came in and as well as saving us from immediate trouble, took a squad of old men destined for relegation and on barely any money relative to his competition took us to regular European qualification. He also kept the bankers at the door by creating saleable assets on a regular basis for Kenwright. Lescott Arteta Rodwell all out the door with not much back through it, yet within a season we were back to making FA Cup semi finals and finishing top 7.
No other manager with a similar brief to what Moyes had can even come close to what he did over that period of time. We are where we are now purely down to a once in a generation manager who saved this club for decades to come.
Yet some revile him for not winning a trophy. Fools. Thank your lucky stars that none of the collection of frauds that have followed him rocked up at Goodison in 2002 otherwise we’d have been on the news reel with Bury if we’d have managed to survive this long.