Few points:
1. Five of the clubs we did outspend won trophies in this time (blackburn, boro, pompey, swansea and birmingham) and a sixth (wigan) have given themselves a damned good chance. Our cup performances have been under par compared by our league performances by anyone's standards.
2. We've had a situation which allows us to financially overachieve, which is that every player at the club has been bought in and offered contracts by
Moyes and his staff so there are no players from previous regimes hanging around on big wages and not fitting into the plans. We're mostly very effecient at only bringing in players we'll use. That's one of the reasons so many of the other clubs are wasting a lot of money we ain't and that well run clubs like swansea find it so easy to outperform them.
3. The idea that we'd possibly be better off if
Moyes had been sacked after his 2nd season when he finished 17th is insane. I've ran out of patience with the guy but what he did to get us 4th the season after is extraordinary.
4. In fact, the quality of the team Moyes has produced on his budget is extraordinary, he deserves (and gets) a lot of credit for that. There's very few managers in the english game to do so well in the transfer market for such a prolonged period of time in the modern era. However if he can't win trophies with that team no matter how favourable the draw then what's the point? What does having that team gain us?
5. He's still on far too much money and too arrogant about putting himself before the club but our board have had to give way on that because he's shielded them from criticism so effectively that most people wouldn't guess we were being outspent by 13 of the 19 other league teams if you asked them.
