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But I'm on a crusade to respond to any perceived negativity and I am seeing a lot of talk about conflicts between Moyes and recruitment, poor transfer planning, bad squad development, etc.

So a couple of points:

We started the 2024/25 season in the following manner:


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We lost the first 4 games of the season including two from having been 2-0 ahead. We had only won 3 league matches as of January 9th. By all accounts TFG wanted stability but as soon as it was clear that Dyche didn't feel capable of improvement he was promptly sacked and replaced with Moyes. They can act quickly and decisively when they want to.

We finished that season a comfortable 13th and everyone had a basic demand of stability with an outside hope of possibly making Europe depending on how other teams performed. As it turned out, other teams did badly, which created opportunities for weakers sides to quality for Europe. As of the penultimate game of the season we were in a European place, but results went against us and we finished in 13th. This is about par given our squad cost and wage bill.

It will take several transfer windows to get to a position where we *should* be getting into Europe. It would be foolish and wrong to breach PSR etc in a reckless gamble to do that quickly.

We had a small squad and injuries to our 2 best players.

There is a fundamental conflict between the manager's decision to play his favoured XI despite them looking tired, and most fans who wanted to see more rotation and experimentation. Whether Jake O'Brien would have been better at centre back than Michael Keane, Patterson better at right back than O'Brien, or whether George or Dibling should have had more minutes are all debatable. We don't have enough evidence to be confident either way. Ultimately though Moyes sees them in training and has a lot of experience. If he thinks Patterson isn't good enough, I will take that.

If the club had options at right back in January, but decided it would be better to wait until there were better (or the same but cheaper) options in the summer then fine.

Moyes is third highest in terms of Premier League games managed. You don't achieve that by flukey appointments.

Moyes has been LMA Manager of the Year three times. You don't achieve that without being highly respected by your peers.

So far in this window we've been closely linked to Hayden Hackney. Lots of people think he's not good enough. Others are complaining at how long the deal is taking. These people need to get off social media. There's nothing wrong with speculation and gossip but too many people take snippets of information and rumours as a basis to criticise the club. There is very little new information relating to Ndiaye and yet people are getting into massive arguments about his situation.

The technical director Nick Cox has only been here a year. His job is to turnaround the Academy and he's one of the most respected in the league. Under his leadership Man United brought almost 30 players through their academy into the first team.

The chief scout James Smith has been here less than a year. He worked at Everton for 10 years previously, and then went to Man United with Moyes . Since then he had a major role at Man City responsible for a committee-style structure that identified recruitment targets.

There is no reason to assume there is a clash and despite teething problems with recruitment last summer it's not as if we have a DoF vs. Manager dynamic. This is the set up TFG wanted.

There is nothing wrong with speculating on problems behind the scenes but let's not assume the worst. 90% of x/Twitter bots are designed to provoke anger and fury. Don't do their work for them. Keep this forum as a sanctity of calmness, rational analysis and community.

Only get excited by a potential signing when they're holding the shirt. Only get disappointed by an exit once the sale is confirmed. Make judgments about the window when it closes. Trust the professionals and support the team!