Moyes is grumblingly disliked by a minority of Everton supporters who would rather see the club swerve more recklessly, and maybe joyfully, toward glory. The other-side-of-the-fence comparison here is Portsmouth, a fellow mid-shelf English team that won the FA Cup in 2008 behind, as it turned out, a completely insupportable financial model that saw the club implode the following season.7 Money isn't everything in soccer, but it's a guarantee of life; Portsmouth fans can look back on the thrill of winning the cup, but their team now plays in the third division and nearly ceased to exist in the interim.
One of the weirdest things about the current dynamics of money in soccer is the way it forces all but the top clubs into compromises with their own priorities. Everton isn't always fun to watch, and they never win anything, but you know they're always going to be there, grinding out points in the Premier League, contending for a Europa League place. Portsmouth enjoyed its flare of triumph and then, as a fan experience, basically went dark. What counts as winning in this system? If you're a supporter, what would you rather see? The romantic choice is obviously to take the win and the collapse — but again, we're not talking about a title followed by a few down seasons here, we're talking about a title followed by utter cave-in, minor-league status, a total transformation. How do you even parse that?