Yeah, and it's also easy to forget that Tony Hibbert and Leon Osman were once products of the academy with little experience when Moyes took over. Then there's Anichebe and Vaughan (who was handed PL footy at age 16).
Looking at what he got wrong, you're right, there wasn't a lot of players he never used that leave the impression he got it wrong. People will obviously point to Dier and Mustafi but if you look at those two, you can see it still took them a while to get to the levels they did. Mustafi went to Sampdoria and didn't make his debut for 4 months and they were in Serie B at the time. He made one appearance in Serie B, they were promoted and he then waited until November to get his second appearance on the board. Dier went back to Sporting and initially went straight in to their B team it was a couple of months plus before he made his first team debut. What other youngsters were cast aside that went on to achieve anything of note? Obviously we will never know how things would have panned out with Stones, but other than that, the only player I can think of who achieved anything close to being at this level is Jake Bidwell.
I’m convinced Barkley would have turned out to be a much better player if he’d stayed developing with
Moyes rather than Martinez. Yes Martinez unleashed him in 13/14 season and we all saw the natural talent he had but then he regressed into a player that couldn’t nail down a position and seemed overwhelmed with decision making when he had the ball or where to be on the pitch when he didn’t.
Moyes would never have let that happen and Barkley might have been an England regular rather than the player he has been. Tom Davies is another one. He might not have been a first team regular as a teenager but he might have still been a PL player if Moyes had got hold of him and could have had a career like Osman had for us. Would Robinson have left if Moyes had been here guiding a pathway for him.
Perhaps we may also have seen better handling of Browning, Galloway, Godfrey, Kenny, Holgate, Dowell, Pennington, Smalling, Simms, Cannon. Whether that meant cutting them off earlier so they never played for us or bringing them through in a different way id put more money on Moyes getting it right than any of our other managers since he left.