Everton must resist temptation of a chaotic future after David Moyes

There should be a manager of the year award each year for the manager who has managed to go most entirely under the radar by just doing a good job without fuss or bother or incendiary comments.

We can’t quite place him in full manager of the year contention – although there remains a chance that could change over the closing months of the season – but David Moyes would clean up in such a fictional award.

If one were feeling mean, one might say that being rewarded for quiet, consistent achievement by winning a fictional award would be quite on-brand for a manager whose career has been marked by quiet consistency and winning the definitely not real so-called Europa so-called Conference.

But we’re not here to be mean, so we won’t say any of that.

What is definitely fair to say is it’s been an under-rated effort from Moyes and his Everton team to quietly avoid chaos in a season full of it.

The sheer quantity of chaos elsewhere is a huge factor here, of course. Three of the old Big Six have loudly sacked managers this year, Liverpool have been tempted to do likewise, while Nottingham Forest have moved from a policy of having one manager per football season to one manager for each season of the year.

Spurs are going down, Liverpool have made a complete bollocks of defending their Premier League title, Man United were awful and then really good and now somewhere in the middle, Wolves were the worst team in Premier League history for a good half a season and Bournemouth have once again done that thing of always being either eye-catchingly good or eye-catchingly bad.

Yet among the swirling chaos and the noise and the uncertainty of a new stadium, Moyes and the lads have just quietly chipped away at the season, easing past 40 points and with the possibility of really catching everyone out over the remaining weeks.

Everton fans more than any other know the agonies Spurs supporters are currently enduring as the risk of ever-present Premier League being spaffed away looms large, and will thus be enjoying the sight of it happening to someone else more than most.

For Moyes and Everton ambitions now lie in an entirely different direction, with European qualification a distinct possibility. They are now just a point outside the top seven and only five adrift of an unconvincing Liverpool in sixth.

This is where Moyes does his best work, isn’t it? Just quietly, unassumingly putting a good side into a good position. Generally, this is followed by one of two problems down the line. One, people start noticing that it’s going really well, and it instantly collapses in on itself.

Two, and this is the fear you have with Everton, thoughts start to creep in that there could be something more out there than the quiet mid-table calm Moyes offers.

Now that Everton are one of the big new stadium clubs – and having a season almost entirely devoid of panic straight after the stadium move is a big win in itself – you always have the fear that there will start to be talks about ‘next level’ or ‘brand of football’ and before you know it Everton are 16th in November under an exciting but flailing manager and looking for a firefighter again.

They must stay strong, they must remain vigilant. What you have here is very good indeed.