The People's Forum: I'm not too worried about league position, it's volatile for half the league

and the fact that all our best players are out is obviously a huge factor, but that doesn't absolve Moyes of all blame for some shocking performances, particularly at home this season. Chaotic defending at corner, playing too high a line when you have centre backs with no pace up against quick forwards, an over-reliance on Grealish that opponents cottoned on to months ago, the refusal to employ subs when needed - and often getting them badly wrong when they are finally made...he's made plenty of errors which is fine, except that he seems frustratingly stubborn when it comes to recognising them.

Overall I still think he's got credit in the bank, this was always going to be a transitional season, the squad rebuild is far from complete and there were going to be ups and downs. Another manager might have chalked up more points at home but probably wouldn't have achieved as many away wins, where his conservative nature alongside the improved quality at his disposal has allowed us to hit teams who fancied their chances of a home win on the break.

It's been pretty dreadful stuff in 2026 so far, let's not pretend otherwise, and even before then there were legitimate criticisms to be made.

I still think he's done a superb job whatever happens next, question will be whether he's the man to take things on to the next stage.

Regardless of fan opinion, I am sure the Friedkins will be biding their time and looking at things in the round come the end of the season. Top 7-8 is still very much achievable with a full squad. At the same time, they will probably be exploring options and quite rightly so.

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All the pointing of fingers at supporters doesn't change that.

He did well when he came in second half of last season, this season he's back to being an inflexible Czar with a cob on all the time when it's his decisions that have fucked us up.

In short: fuck Moyes.

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Not so much the recent turgid performances or conservative selections / use of subs (both of which are true), but the fact that so many of our fanbase are just gagging for him to fail. There’s a group who didn’t like him first time around, a group who didn’t like him running his contract down, and a group who didn’t like the way he went about going after Fellaini / Baines.

A year ago we were heading for the Championship. We’ve had some narrow escapes over the last few years but I really did think we were toast - especially with the group of players that we had and the playing style they’d been coached to over a number of years. To turn that around so quickly and have us comfortably safe…I’m really not sure there’s many who could’ve done that. And certainly fewer still who’d have been willing to join us.

This season, we were 5th at the start of December and top ten at new year for the first time in forever. We’ve had injuries, suspensions and AFCON since hit an already wafer thin squad and we’re in the middle of a really bad run - both results and performances.

But we had similar ups and downs in Moyes’ first spell with us; it wasn’t until four or five years in that he really started to establish us as a consistent top eight team. This go around he’s had less than a year and one transfer window to correct a start point that’s as bad as we’ve had in years. We’ve been through countless managers trying to come close to even where we’re at, right now.

I don’t think he’s faultless. As I posted the other day, I’m really not convinced that we managed our summer business according to need (and, as Jon posted below, was Kenny Tete really the only right back out there?). I think there are times when he’s been overly cautious with selections, made poor subs (Brentford) or been too slow to change things (Wolves). But there’s a lot of short memories and a lack of patience among many (as well as some longer memories when it comes to his past).

Righting the many years of wrongs was never going to be a one window job. It’s miserable right now, I agree. Moyes hasn’t always helped himself, I agree. But God knows where we’d be without him. And when you look at the next messiahs who’ve been lauded by many (Potter, Thomas Frank, Amorim, Chelsea’s carousel of managers…even Glasner’s Palace are below us in the league and just had a more embarrassing cup exit) do we really have the confidence that there’s someone out there just primed to step in and do better?

I’m not advocating giving him forever but surely he deserves one poor run at a time when circumstances (was it nine senior players unavailable today?) are most certainly altering the case? I suspect there’s a few who are revelling in feeling vindicated, however, vs accounting for the context of where we’ve come from, where we’re at, and that the journey to where we want to get to isn’t going to be beautifully linear.