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Sir Alex Ferguson had built a magnificent brick wall, it soared above the rest even higher than Liverpool who proudly stood highest for years prior. Now, when Sir Alex took over at Manchester United this wall was a mere speck of what it is today.
The man is a true football genius, taking over a team in a relegation scare without an English title for 26 years and making them the most successful club in English league history.
Here we are 26 years after he took charge and he has 13 Premier League titles, five FA Cups, four League Cups, two Champions Leagues, ten Charity Shields, one Club World Cup and even more to his name. His retirement was announced and only days later his successor was chosen.
Ferguson had chosen his successor, fellow Scotsman and long-term Everton manager David Moyes. He certainly wouldn’t have been mine or many other United fans choice but he did quite well at Everton but he wasn’t this world-renowned manager with success in the highest level of European football, he was an Everton manager without a trophy nor every really challenging for the title or Top 4.
You very rightly can argue he never had the funds or the backing to challenge the ‘English elite teams’ and fair enough but surely a proven manager like Guardiola would be a much better option. Obviously he had already joined Bayern and was out of the question but he’s the kind of manager we needed. But hey, I was ready to trust Sir Alex and give my full backing to David Moyes. Moyes made two huge mistakes early on, the first, not keeping Ferguson’s backroom staff. Rene Meulensteen and Mike Phelan could have proved vital in helping Moyes settle in. Alas he didn’t keep them and this lead onto his second mistake, the transfer window.
The greatest manager of all time has left a team that in truth had so many flaws. Fergie ignored the clear fact we needed a world-class centre midfielder for years. We still use the same midfield pairing from our 2008 European success, Carrick and Fletcher arguably our strongest pairing to this day. Moyes was aware of the void in our midfield and set out after Thiago and Cesc Fabregas from Barcelona as well as being linked with every midfielder in Europe last summer.
We failed in all attempts for every player we went from and we eventually gave up on some players but Moyes kept interest in former players Maroune Fellaini and Leighton Baines. These would have been great signings but United made terrible bids which were all rejected. Fellaini had a release clause but we didn’t activate it because Moyes wanted both players. This clause eventually ran out without us nor any other club activating it. We ended up panicking on deadline day, over-spending on our only signing Fellaini while missing out on the likes of Fabio Coentrao, Baines and Ander Herrera.
It was crucial we spent well last summer and we didn’t, at all. Don’t get me wrong, I love Fellaini and always wanted him here just not in that manner. It was a truly embarrassing transfer window topped with an abysmal Deadline Day failing with Coentrao in the last few hours and the comedy sketch which was us trying to sign Herrera. Don’t get me wrong I’m very happy with signing Juan Mata and Fellaini but how we approached some players and the fact we needed more signings have made it seem like an utter failure.
Moyes’ reign started perfectly, a win (and silverware) in the Community Shield and a fantastic win away to Swansea. It was only downhill from there I’m afraid. Here we are in March sitting in seventh, in our worst season in Premier League history. I don’t even want to know how many games we’ve lost this season but I can tell you, it’s too much. We’ve lost against big teams and small teams there’s no criteria. In the league we’ve lost to Chelsea, City, Spurs, Everton, Liverpool the list goes on. It’s embarrassing, our season is well and truly over after another fantastic display against Liverpool at Old Trafford, spot the sarcasm.
Comparing David Moyes’ start to Ferguson’s is laughable. Moyes took over a team that only a few months prior won the league at a stroll after dominating the whole Premier League era. while as mentioned Ferguson had almost the exact opposite, not quite but close enough. When will it end? Right now it seems it’ll only end if Moyes is sacked or he resigns. He’s made countless squad selection errors throughout the whole season, not only starting 11 but with his subs or lack of at times.
How many times have I seen my Twitter timeline full of people screaming because we’re losing and Moyes is refusing to make a change and when he does half of the time it’s the wrong change. His tactics are wrong far too often and if it’s not working I wouldn’t bet on him changing it.
We were unlucky, I thought we played well, [Enter opposition name] deserved the win, the refs are against us. Just some of the remarks we’ve become accustomed to under Moyes. It’s always something, we could play awful and he’d say we were unlucky or we played well. I worry that after some games he actually believed we played well. My personal favourite was “we’ll try to make it difficult for Newcastle”, yes that’s a Manchester United manager speaking ahead of a Newcastle game at Old Trafford. Pathetic. There is no sign of change, it’s been the same all season.
Bar two or three good spells where we got our hopes up and this was the turning point but ultimately we were let down every time. I highly doubt that he will be sacked, even this summer. He’ll be given another season at least but, sacking him in my opinion is the right option.
It would be no more than making a statement if he was sacked right now because there’s no point, our season is over bar a miracle in winning the Champions League which I don’t see at all. Can we trust him with our apparent huge transfer budget? In my opinion no, it needs to change…time is up.
Probably a bit early to call for his head, especially given the issues that the squad have. Think he probably needs a second season before you can really judge him. You don’t want to be too hasty when dealing with a football genius.
I could not agree more. One victory in CL back at OT does not all of a sudden make up for the on-going disaster that he has engineered this year. I find it funny that many who ask that he be given time quote the boss, but yet it was Moyes himself who showed utter contempt for SA right out of the gate by becoming pre-occupied with the back-room staff and firing them, resulting directly in part I believe to the disastrous window. He cannot figure out relegation clubs on most occasions so how is he going to figure out BM? Even his last match in the CL they went into a DM shell and would have blown the match against any top club in the CL, or the PL. And most worrying to me is that we are still not scoring (save the odd one off) goals from open play. Question: If he is such a genius why is Mata not being deployed properly? One thing successful people all have in common is that know how to get out and cut their loses and move on to the next best option. With Moyes all we have seen none of this; he appears to be a man obsessed with being right and willing to risk everything at the expense of the club. Hence his initial transfer window. On which I will make one last statement. This we keep our manager crap and give them time: I will submit that if Woodward had not been such a disastrous arrogant noodle and arrogant screw up himself right out of the gate, and if Gill were still in charge, Moyes would already have been sacked. I sincerely believe the only reason he is still here is because they know Woodward made things much worse and they want to protect Woodward and ultimately for making such a poor choice for the chief executive for football operations.
‘truely’, ‘become a custom to’, ‘this lead onto’? Truly, try becoming accustomed to proper use of your own language. Past tense of to lead is led! If you’re going to give a potted history that most people are already aware of before offering anything remotely new, try checking your work before submitting it. More people might then read it. Proper placement of commas might be another worthwhile research topic. Also, if you’re being sarcastic, you don’t need to point it out!
‘English’s elite teams’.
In fairness this is only my second or third piece so it isn’t perfect. If there were mistakes I’d have hoped the editor would have fixed them. Also I would have preferred if you had made note of these errors in a more constructive manner.
You know Word has a spellchecker, right? The key point was ‘try checking your work before submitting it’, your work, your responsibility. If you can’t stand by it…
John, perfection takes time. The big thing for me is that you appear to have a good understanding of the concept. The rest is all just practice…and spell checks. But if you do not have the understanding of the reality then there is nothing pretty words can do to fix or mask the ignorance. Hell, I missed part of an entire sentence! Keep you chin up. Just my two cents.
You really count the Charity Shields?