Jamie Carragher Defends Moyes Amid Everton Criticism
Jamie Carragher believes the frustration swirling around David Moyes has gone too far, arguing that Everton’s manager deserves more credit than criticism after a season that veered from Champions League dreams to late-season collapse.
Everton were flying in March. They thrashed Chelsea, the fanbase dared to glance at the Champions League places, and a club long used to peering nervously over its shoulder suddenly looked upwards. Then the bottom fell out.
Seven games. No wins. No European football. A mood that had flipped from optimism to anger in barely a month.
Carragher understands why it stung. But he thinks the bigger picture is being lost.
“I have always been a David Moyes fan, even when I played against his teams,” he 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.”
The numbers back up the sense of a season that got away from them. Everton, in Moyes’ first full campaign back in charge, moved from years of relegation scraps to the fringes of a top-five push. With seven or eight games to go, Carragher noted, the conversation was not about 17th place. It was about whether Everton could sneak into a Champions League spot.
The shift in tone around the club has been stark. For half a decade, Everton’s campaigns followed a grim pattern: a bad start, panic, a managerial change, and a late scramble to safety. Sam Allardyce. Marco Silva. Frank Lampard. Sean Dyche. Different names, same story.
Last season broke that cycle. Everton were safe early. They were competitive. They were relevant again.
That is why Carragher feels some of the current criticism misses the point.
“I understand it finished badly, I understand there was disappointment there, and I get it,” he said. “But I almost feel it’s a little bit harsh, some of the stick he gets.”
The late slump was not just about form. Key calls went against them. The Key Match Incidents Panel ruled Everton should have had penalties against West Ham United and Manchester City during that run. Beto, Jarrad Branthwaite and Idrissa Gueye all picked up injuries at precisely the wrong time. Margins tightened, confidence ebbed, and a season that had promised Europe ended with nothing to show for it.
The uncertainty over Moyes’ future has not helped the mood either. He is into the final year of his contract, and Carragher senses a fanbase caught between gratitude and doubt, unsure whether to fully commit or brace for change.
He summed it up bluntly: supporters are “almost in between with him at the moment, waiting to see how it goes”.
That “in between” feeling is rooted in raised expectations. At the start of last season, most Evertonians would have grabbed mid-table security with both hands. No drama, no dogfight, no late-night maths with the goal difference column. Just a quiet, stable year.
They got more than that. They got a flirtation with Europe.
“I feel for David Moyes a little bit, in that: at the start of last season, everyone would have said, we just want a season where we don’t have to worry about relegation,” Carragher said. “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.”
The disappointment, he accepts, is real. Everton fans have lived too long on thin gruel: false dawns, failed projects, constant upheaval. When a genuine opportunity slipped away, the reaction was always going to be raw.
“I get that disappointment. Everton supporters right – for so long – have had nothing to hang onto – there’s just that wanting so much…” Carragher said.
But he stopped short of calling for an immediate new deal for Moyes. This, he suggested, is a pivotal season, a natural point of judgment rather than blind loyalty or knee-jerk dismissal.
“I’m not saying he should get a new contract,” he added, “but the next thing this season is: can Everton get to a European position?”
That is the challenge now. Not just to stay up. Not just to stabilise. To turn that brief glimpse of Europe into something more permanent, and to decide whether David Moyes is the man to lead them there.
