Moyes uncertainty can only damage Everton’s season

Recent seasons have seen Everton make a habitually poor start only to hit form in the new year and eventually finish in contention for European qualification. Their uncharacteristically strong start to the 2012/13 season, however, has provided them with the platform to potentially better their past performances.

With ten games remaining, Everton lie in sixth place, two points behind Arsenal in fifth and seven points behind fourth-placed Chelsea. Finishing in fourth would secure entrance to the Champions’ League qualifying round.

There is no doubt that qualification for the Champions League would help Everton. The club would be likely to receive a boost to global profile, receive the significant windfall associated with participation in the group stage – crucial for a club in Everton’s financial position – and use these factors to attract high-quality players.

Everton’s only involvement in the Champions’ League came in the 2005/6 season when they failed to qualify for the group stages after defeat to Villarreal. In doing so, they missed out on the estimated £20m associated with qualification. Ever since, Everton have struggled to repeat their 2005 finish and have been unable to transform potential into reality.

On Thursday Moyes will celebrate the 11th anniversary of his appointment on Merseyside. In that time he has become a figurehead at Goodison Park, achieving consistently impressive league placings relative to the resources at his disposal.

As has been well-documented, this has led to links with bigger clubs such as Tottenham, Chelsea and even Manchester United. His seeming reluctance to pen a new contract – which expires this summer – might suggest he wants to free himself from the financial shackles in which he is currently constrained.

However, their current struggles, widely seen as a threat to the Toffees’ campaign, could in fact confirm one of football’s most famous assumptions – that a team in uncharacteristically good form for one part of the season will struggle in the next.

We have seen it before. Last season, many talked seriously of Harry Redknapp’s Tottenham challenging the Manchester clubs for the title, but the North London outfit tailed off remarkably and ended up missing out on Champions’ League qualification to rivals Arsenal and, by virtue of their victory in the final of said competition, Chelsea.

Much was made of the uncertainty over Redknapp’s future, who at the time was heavily linked with the England job. It seemed to permeate the dressing room and was inextricably tied to Spurs’ poor end-of-season form. With this in mind, the chances of replicating that fourth place finish seem bleak for Everton, a theory corroborated by an indifferent February which saw one point collected from nine in the league. The chastening 3-0 home defeat to Wigan Athletic in the FA Cup was probably Everton’s worst performance of the season, coming in the aftermath of intense speculation over Moyes’ future.

However, Redknapp was vocal about the unique appeal of managing one’s own country and his players must have felt powerless to define the future of their manager. Alternatively Moyes is ostensibly devoid of managerial offers from elsewhere; while his future is uncertain, the Everton squad may well be the masters of his destiny.

After last weekend’s victory over Reading, and with both Arsenal and Chelsea in indifferent form, Everton have an opportunity to overhaul the established elite. Surely another long-awaited chance to reach the Champions’ League group stages would sate Moyes’ ambitions in both footballing and financial terms, simultaneously ending speculation over his future.