FM 2015 Simulation: A Second Chance for David Moyes

With the power vested in me by the FM 2015 editor I decided to make a little experiment: put David Moyes back in charge of Everton at the start of the 2014-2015 season and see how things go. They are after all 12th in the Premier League at the moment with Roberto Martinez at the helm, so I figured it couldn’t go much worse…

Let’s start the FM 2015 simulation and see what happens.

Moyes didn’t go crazy with the spending during the summer transfer window, he brought in Jose Antonio Reyes from Sevilla and Mati Fernandez from Fiorentina for a total of 3.8 million and sold Antolin Alcaraz for some reason.

Now let’s see the results from the start of the season until the end of December. (Warning: if you’re an Everton fan you might want to skip the next screen shot!)

Disaster would be a strong word to describe what happened but not very far from the truth. Everton secured just four Premier League wins and lost the vast majority of the other matches. They also got knocked out in the third round of the Capital One Cup.

The only less dark spot was the Europa League, where they managed to get past the group stage. Oh, and there’s another bright spot: they beat Manchester United 2-1 at Old Trafford, surely Moyes was pleased with that!

The second half of the season was a bit better, even though Moyes didn’t make any transfers in January. They secured quite a few wins which allowed the club to avoid relegation. They also reached the semi finals of the Europa League but got knocked out by Benfica.

Everton ended the season 15th in the Premier League, so worse than they are currently placed in real life under Roberto Martinez. Oh, and they lost both matches against Liverpool, 3-0 at Anfield and 2-1 at Goodison Park.

Immediately after the last match of the season the Everton chairman announced that Moyes’ second chance spell was up, he got sacked. The successor in my FM 2015 simulation was Sean Dyche, who led Burnley to a surprising ninth-place finish.

Let’s have a look at how the Everton players performed in the simulated season, the data below is sorted by the players’ average rating. First odd thing is that the only new signings, Fernandez and Reyes, were fringe players, they started less than half of the matches the team played in all competitions.

The most competitive players were John Stones, Leighton Baines and James McCarthy, they played well on a regular basis, while Gareth Barry also did a solid job in midfield. Ross Barkley didn’t play much though, can’t understand why.

The experiment is over and the message to the Everton board is clear: if you trust Football Manager, please don’t give David Moyes a second chance! He might get you dangerously close to relegation (not that Martinez is very far from that at the moment).

I hope you have enjoyed my little experiment, feel free to suggest other ideas for simulations and I will try to make them happen!