Moyes a victim of his own success
In objective terms, Moyes has overperformed yet again in 2012. Everton are the ninth-richest club in the league, yet they currently sit seventh, one place ahead of Liverpool and eight ahead of Aston Villa, both of whom have larger turnovers.
If Everton supporters were strictly rational, they would be satisfied to see the club once again perform better than its finances entitle it to.
Sadly for Moyes, happiness and unhappiness are not states that rigidly correspond to certain objective conditions, but rather fleeting moods that accompany the sense of gaining or losing.
Studies of lottery winners show that they are usually ecstatic in the time immediately following their big win, but that within a few months they are back to feeling about as happy as they were before they became millionaires.
Rich people who could relax and enjoy their wealth more often choose to pursue further riches, with what can seem like inhuman greed. It’s not really the extra money that brings them satisfaction, but rather the making of it, the sense of gaining.
Eddie Murphy illustrated a related point in his legendary show “Raw’’:
“If you’re starving and someone gives you a cracker, you gonna be: Goddamn, that’s the best cracker I ever ate in my life! That ain’t no regular cracker was it? What was that, a Saltine? Goddamn, that was delicious. Can I have another one please? Please, one more.”
The point is that people’s sense of happiness or unhappiness depends less upon their objective condition so much as their sense of whether things are getting better or worse.
David Moyes’ problem is that he has been slightly outperforming baseline expectations for so long that slight overachievement has become the new baseline expectation, and a sense of stagnation has set in.
The only way he can get the supporters excited again is actually to win something, but Saturday’s failure to beat Liverpool meant Everton have now gone 17 years without winning a trophy, the longest such run in the club’s history.
After a defeat like that, fans don’t think about debt service and wage constraints, but instead complain that the manager has sent the team out to play negative, lifeless football. And it is true that Everton played poorly on Saturday, allowing a nervous Liverpool side space to regroup and then fight their way back into the game.
It is easy for supporters to criticise Moyes for clinging to the one-goal lead, and after that the draw, in the hope of extra time and penalties.
The 40-metre gap between the lone forward Nikica Jelavic and his team-mates became proof in their eyes of the manager’s cowardice.
Yet there can be no fair analysis of Everton’s performance that does not recognise the constraints under which Moyes has to work.
If Steven Pienaar had not been cup-tied as a result of having moved to Spurs for higher wages, maybe Everton’s passing would have had more invention. If Mikel Arteta hadn’t moved to Arsenal for higher wages, maybe Everton would have been able to keep the ball in midfield. The point is that if Everton had the money to hold on to their best players, their football would probably be less negative and lifeless.
Nevertheless, Moyes finds himself labelled a negative manager whose cowardly tactics cause his team to lose big games. His frustration boiled over afterwards as he sourly singled out “a stupid decision” by Seamus Coleman for costing Everton the game.
It was harsh on a young player who knew well that he was at fault and who has been one of the more exciting players at Everton over the last couple of seasons. Not Moyes’ finest hour, but who among us does not occasionally succumb to gracelessness in the face of crushing disappointment?
There is no chance of the chairman Bill Kenwright asking Moyes to leave, but if the manager listens to the complaints of an increasingly vocal section of the support and decides to walk, those supporters might discover that negative, lifeless football is what tends to happen at clubs with limited resources.
You can talk about the supposedly more exciting football being played by teams like Swansea and Norwich, but none of those teams will win anything this season and both will finish below Everton. It’s unfortunate many Everton fans have grown accustomed to consistently solid results to take pleasure in them. The mood of discontent suggests Moyes is unlikely to complete another decade in the job. But while he remains at Goodison, his critics should have more respect for a manager doing as well as anyone could reasonably expect.
