Carragher Defends Moyes Amid Everton's Collapse
Jamie Carragher believes Everton fans are right to feel bruised by the way last season collapsed – but insists some of the criticism aimed at David Moyes has gone too far.
Everton were flirting with the Champions League places after hammering Chelsea in March, only to fall apart in the run-in. Seven games without a win turned a season of promise into one that ended without any European football at all.
That swing in fortunes has sharpened the debate over Moyes’ future, with the Scot now in the final year of his contract. The uncertainty has fed into the frustration. Carragher understands the mood, but he sees something else in it too: proof of how far Everton have come under their manager.
“I have always been a David Moyes fan, even when I played against his teams,” Carragher said on The Overlap Fan Debate with Sky Bet. “The first time around as Everton manager, he was doing a brilliant job, and he’s done a brilliant job since he’s come back too.”
Not long ago, Everton’s seasons followed a grim pattern. Slow start, slide towards danger, sack the manager, scramble to safety. Survive, reset, repeat. Relegation talk was never far away, and the club lurched from Sam Allardyce to Marco Silva to Frank Lampard to Sean Dyche trying to break the cycle.
Last season felt different. Moyes’ first full campaign back brought stability. No desperate winter firefight. No late escape act. Instead, with seven or eight games to go, Everton were being talked about as having an outside shot at a top-five finish and a Champions League place.
“The jump from where they’d been to – for you saying, with seven games to go, you had an outside chance of a top five Champions League position,” Carragher said. “For Everton, it feels like every season they’re trying to fight relegation… Then his first full season, which was last season, with seven or eight games to go, you’re talking about having a chance for the Champions League.”
Then came the crash.
The Blues failed to win any of their final seven league matches. Key decisions went against them. The Key Match Incidents Panel later ruled they should have had penalties against West Ham United and Manchester City. Injuries to Beto, Jarrad Branthwaite and Idrissa Gueye stripped Moyes of important players at the worst possible time.
The momentum drained away. Europe slipped from their grasp.
“I understand it finished badly, I understand there was disappointment there, and I get it,” Carragher said. “But I almost feel it’s a little bit harsh, some of the stick he gets.”
For Carragher, the very fact Evertonians are now raging about missing out on Europe – rather than fearing the drop – is itself a sign of progress. The bar has moved. Expectations have grown.
“I feel for David Moyes a little bit,” he continued. “At the start of last season, everyone would have said, we just want a season where we don’t have to worry about relegation.
“My point is, it felt like the first half of every season for a good few years, you’d change a manager to make sure you stayed up… You were getting to a situation where you were going into a season – last season – saying, we just don’t want to ever worry about relegation. That was never there [before]. And then you had [a near miss on] European football.”
That shift has left supporters, in Carragher’s words, “almost in between” on Moyes – grateful for the stability, desperate for more, and waiting to see which way this season breaks.
“Everton supporters right – for so long – have had nothing to hang onto – there’s just that wanting so much…” he said. “I’m not saying he should get a new contract, but the next thing this season is: can Everton get to a European position?”
The question now hangs over Moyes’ final contract year. Is last season’s collapse a warning sign, or the painful next step of a club finally daring to look up the table again?
