Carragher Supports Moyes Amid Everton Fan Frustration
Jamie Carragher believes the anger aimed at David Moyes after Everton’s late-season collapse has gone too far – even if he fully understands why supporters are still seething.
Everton were flirting with the Champions League places in March after dismantling Chelsea, only to fall apart when it mattered most. Seven games, no wins, and a slide so steep they ended up missing out on Europe altogether. For a fanbase starved of optimism, it felt like the rug had been ripped away.
Carragher, speaking on The Overlap Fan Debate with Sky Bet, accepts the hurt. 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. “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.”
This is where the tension lies. Moyes is into the final year of his contract. The uncertainty over his future hangs over the club, and the mood in the stands reflects that limbo. Carragher senses a fanbase stuck between gratitude and doubt.
He described it as supporters being “almost in between with him at the moment, waiting to see how it goes.”
From survival scraps to European talk
What Carragher keeps coming back to is the starting point. For years, Everton’s seasons have followed a grim pattern: a bad start, a managerial sacking, and a late scramble to stay up. Names like Sam Allardyce, Marco Silva, Frank Lampard and Sean Dyche mark a turbulent era defined by firefighting.
Last season broke that cycle.
“The jump from where they’d been to… 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 – they normally change the manager in the middle of the season and end up safe. 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.”
That shift in expectation is exactly what, in Carragher’s eyes, shows Moyes has done more right than wrong. At the start of the campaign, he argued, most Evertonians would have taken a quiet, mid-table year with no mention of the drop. By spring, they were daring to dream of Europe.
Then came the crash.
“I understand it finished badly, I understand there was disappointment there, and I get it,” he admitted. “But I almost feel it’s a little bit harsh, some of the stick he gets.”
Fine margins and costly blows
Everton’s late slump was not just about form. It was about moments and misfortune too.
Across that winless run, the club were stung by a series of decisions that went against them. The Key Match Incidents Panel later ruled they should have had penalties against West Ham United and Manchester City – big calls in big games, with European hopes on the line.
On top of that, Beto, Jarrad Branthwaite and Idrissa Gueye all picked up injuries at crucial times. Key players, missing when Moyes needed them most.
None of that erases the disappointment. It does, in Carragher’s view, add context.
He feels some of the fury has been sharpened by how long Everton fans have gone without anything to cling to. A fanbase that has lived through relegation battles, boardroom anger and constant churn in the dugout finally saw a path to something better – and watched it fade over a matter of weeks.
“I feel for David Moyes a little bit,” Carragher said. “At the start of last season, everyone would have said, we just want a season where we don’t have to worry about relegation.”
They got that. Then they almost got more.
“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,” he added, name-checking Allardyce, Silva, Lampard and Dyche. “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.”
What comes next for Moyes and Everton?
Carragher stopped short of calling for an automatic contract extension. This is not blind defence of Moyes. It is a call for perspective.
“I get that disappointment,” he said. “Everton supporters right – for so long – have had nothing to hang onto – there’s just that wanting so much… I’m not saying he should get a new contract, but the next thing this season is: can Everton get to a European position?”
That is the challenge now. The bar has been raised. Survival is no longer enough. A club that once braced itself for relegation scraps is now being judged on whether it can push into Europe.
Moyes has taken Everton to the brink of that step. The question, as Carragher frames it, is simple: does he get the chance to finish the job?
