Seemed a no-brainer and all the contractual pieces were in place so was clearly us dragging out the decision.

I think that - if you look at it through Moyes’ eyes - he was only really backed with Grealish (very good until injured) and Dewsbury-Hall (excellent). The others were all young players for the future and may or may not have been his choices. I think it’s pretty clear from his team selections - where we’ve essentially only added Dewsbury-Hall and Grealish (for half a season) that those are the signings he wanted and trusted. So, set against that backdrop, I can see how he’d feel it was a good and very nearly better than good season. And hey, maybe if we’d backed him a bit more and got an experienced couple of full backs and a better forward than Barry, maybe we would’ve been in the mix for top five.

But…we clearly missed opportunity after opportunity and could / should have done so much better. Often because of his selections and unwillingness to try anything different (which, I’m sure, stems from a lack of trust in the squad - which the last few years have taught us is poor). And he’s - seemingly - done very little to advance the capability of the players we paid good money to buy (and Rohl’s recent cameos have shown why they need to be given minutes). So, I’m a very long way from defending him.

I actually don’t care if he stays or goes. He did what we needed and I think we can move onwards and upwards from here. I’m not afraid of the change but I do think it’s worth keeping in mind the mistakes of the past.

Ultimately, I agree entirely with Neil’s assessment that he raises our floor and caps our ceiling. I think we owe the man a lot more appreciation than he gets for bailing us out (twice), plus his vision to build Finch Farm and the foundations that enabled us to be where we are today, but I’ve no truck if we decide that now’s the time to look forward.