Come in Chosen One… your time is up.

Today Manchester United, for all their early-season bluster about longevity, parted ways with “The Chosen One” David Moyes, after a string of poor results and failure to qualify for next season’s Champions League rendered his position apparently untenable. Herein I shall attempt to dissect what has gone so badly wrong for last year’s champions and in particular the manager. There are many reasons for Manchester United’s sudden and unexpected (by some) decline. I’ve already gone over some of the reasons why this season’s performance hasn’t been up to scratch (or more crucially that last season they over-achieved) in my previous piece, and I’ll do my best not to repeat myself here. While the bulk of my analysis will be the manager himself, certain things need also to be said of the players too.

The Players

In simplest terms, the players have let Moyes down badly on and off the pitch. Some of the performances have done more damage for me than the results. Conceding late, failing to retain (or build on) a lead, and a display at Everton which was frankly impotent. The manner of that defeat was worse than the scoreline. I have been lamenting the “sleepy” performances of Rio Ferdinand for five seasons now, and other older players have felt like they’ve been playing with the metaphorical fag in their mouths. Nemanja Vidic announcing his departure halfway through the season was a ludicrous state of affairs and some of his performances – and in particular some of the facial reactions to conceding goals – have told the story of a man already thinking about his new club. Either that or his holiday.

Smalling ; fool.

Off the pitch, the poor discipline of Moyes’ young (English) players further betrayed a lack of commitment to the cause with their penchant for a late night at the most inopportune times. On the eve of the West Ham game in March, Chris Smalling (24) – while injured – was photographed and observed dancing a jig outside a Manchester club at 3AM, singing: “We’re Man United – we’ll do what we want.” An observer said “He’d obviously had a good night with his mates. They were singing football songs and having a great time.” I’m not sure whether it’s the behaviour itself that I find so repugnant or the irresponsibility of having a night on the lash when you’re meant to be injured and seeming so buoyant despite your team enduring a season of unprecedented failure, but this was not a great message about the discipline at the club.

Welbeck ; clown.

Mere weeks later Danny Welbeck (23) and Tom Cleverley (24) were also snapped dancing in the street outside Sakura on Deansgate Locks at 3AM hours after being knocked out of the Champions League by Bayern after Ashley Young had jumped into a taxi. An onlooker gave the MEN paper a quote of “It is amazing. They were laughing and dancing and looked to be having a real good night.” Spot a pattern emerging here? I can’t imagine any Man United fan not being offended by such crass merriment so soon after a devastating loss. Players like Smalling, Welbeck and Cleverley should thank their lucky stars they get near a Manchester United starting 11, and this behaviour I find totally deplorable, even as a neutral.

Revolving door centre-backs

Once upon a time…

Due to the reliance on the injury-prone Vidic and the past-it Ferdinand who also had spells on the sidelines, Moyes has had to constantly rotate his centre-back partnerships. Even in this era of rotation, you simply can’t compete without a settled defensive core of goalkeeper and centre-backs. Ferdinand and Vidic playing together every week won them titles. Kompany & Lescott won one for their local rivals. You build from the back, and United have been trying to build on shifting sands rather than concrete.

Have a look at United’s centre-backs for the following poor results :

22/09/13 Man City (A) 1-4            Ferdinand and Vidic
28/09/13 West Brom (H) 1-2        Ferdinand and Evans
19/10/13 Southampton (H) 1-1     Jones and Evans
24/11/13 Cardiff (A) 2-2                  Ferdinand and Evans
04/12/13 Everton (H) 0-1               Smalling and Vidic
07/12/13 Newcastle (H) 0-1          Vidic and Evans
01/02/14 Stoke (A) 1-2                   Jones and Evans
09/02/14 Fulham (H) 2-2              Smalling and Vidic
16/03/14 Liverpool (H) 0-3           Jones and Vidic
25/03/14 Man City (H) 0-3            Jones and Ferdinand
20/04/14 Everton (A) 0-2              Jones and Evans

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but that’s far too much screwing around. No understanding between De Gea and any partnership could truly be established, so their defence suffered catastrophically. If too many years hadn’t been spent trying to turn Smalling into a right-back and Jones into a midfielder when they had an establised centre-back partnership for the England Under-21s, they might have been laughing now.

Points dropped due to defensive-minded substitutions

Tough place to win, Cardiff. Just ask Cardiff themselves.

Moyes’ mentality when it came to changes was still very much a mid-table manager’s mindset when he first arrived. In the mauling at Man City, at 4-0 down he replaced Ashley Young with Tom Cleverly on 52 minutes, attempting damage limitation rather than a change to inspire a comeback. That’s not Manchester United. In the Southampton game where an 89th minute equalizer was conceded, he replaced Nani with Ryan Giggs on 69 and Wayne Rooney with Chris Smalling on 87, two clear indicators of “We’ll take a 1-0.” Traditionally Man United have always defended a one goal lead at home by scoring a second and third, not trying to shut up shop. A 1-0 at home to Barcelona I could understand, but it’s Southampton! In the Cardiff game, Moyes again brought on Ryan Giggs – this time for Javier Hernandez – on 73 minutes, attempting to settle for the win by the odd goal, only to concede a 90th minute equalizer. Taking the lead and failing to retain (or build on) it? Conceding late goals? That’s not Manchester United. By December, he’d gotten out of the habit of making these timid changes, but by that time United’s soft underbelly had been exposed too many times, the fear factor was gone, and defeats at home to Everton and Newcastle were just round the corner.

“It’ll be alright in the end”

Listening to the comments Moyes made after every bad result, his biggest mistake may have been believing the board were going to show patience. Every game seemed to be “it’s a work in progress” and if you keep thinking it’s all about the future, you get caught napping and suddenly the tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday is TODAY, and the poor performances are still going on. All of these quotes are taken from the BBC website in the wake of (I feel) United’s poorest results of the season, and there are some trends. He laments poor defending from set pieces and not taking chances to put games out of sight, but the same problems occur in subsequent games, he seems to not know how they haven’t won certain games (here’s a clue David – your players weren’t good enough) and vitally – it’s a long-term process. It’s highly feasible that these assurances from Moyes of his God-given right to the time to turn things around merely served to highlight how desperate they are NOW, and helped the board decide enough was enough.

22/09/13 City (A) 1-4
“I’ve made the players aware of how I expect them to respond, if there was any group of players I would expect that from it would be Manchester United players. It is the way they have been brought up.”
“Every manager has bad days and bad results and I’m no different.”
“It is one game. There are plenty more to come and plenty of time to fix it.”

28/09/13 West Brom (H) 1-2
“You’re always going to have bad results in football, it is how you deal with them, we will move on and look forward to the next one. There are lots of games here and you get ready for the next one.”
“I’m concerned after the game but only because we didn’t play well. We can put it right.”

19/10/13 Southampton (H) 1-1 (Lallana 89th minute equalizer)
“We had the opportunities to get the game finished off. While it was 1-0, there was always the chance that Southampton might get something. I thought we had just about seen it out, then they got the corner late on. We didn’t do well enough [from the corner]. We will work on it and make sure we do it.”

24/11/13 Cardiff (A) 2-2 (Kim 90th minute equalizer)
“Disappointment that we didn’t take all three points, but Cardiff made a game of it and put us under pressure. We gave away a stupid free-kick which led to the [equalising] goal but we had one or two chances ourselves which could have put the game to bed earlier.”

04/12/13 Everton (H) 0-1 (Oviedo 86th minute winner)
“I am disappointed to lose, that’s the way the game goes sometimes. The game was tight, we missed some opportunities to score and Everton took their opportunities.”

“Spiceworld.”

07/12/13 Newcastle (H) 0-1
“We have to play better, pass it better, make more chances and take more opportunities. But we have just not been able to do that in the last couple of games.”
“(The fans) understand there is a big transition going on here. I don’t think they, or me, expected us to have lost five games at this time of the season, but I think they understand totally that there is a change going on.”

01/02/14 Stoke (A) 1-2
“I don’t know what we have to do to win, I thought we were extremely unlucky.”
 “We made numerous chances and opportunities to score, but we couldn’t take them,”
“We should have been out of sight with the amount of opportunities we had today and we only have ourselves to blame.”

09/02/14 Fulham (H) 2-2 (Bent 90th minute equalizer)
“It’s been a bit like that this season. [Sunday] was as bad as it gets. We dominated.”
“Maybe we could have defended a couple of times a bit better, taken a few more of the chances we made, but we completely dominated and we should have won the game. The amount of attempts, chances and play we had was unbelievable. How we didn’t win I have no idea.”

Don’t blame yourselves, lads.

16/03/14 Liverpool (H) 0-3
 “We are going to have to do better. We are going to have to make ourselves harder to beat and also to create more opportunities.
“I think the job was always going to be hard but if you are asking me is it harder than I thought I would say so, yes.”
“It will be very difficult but it is not over yet, So we have to keep working as hard as we can. We have given ourselves a long road.”

25/03/14 Man City (H) 0-3
“I thought it would be a tough year but I hoped it would be more competitive.”
“Everybody knows this is a job that is going to take a little bit of time to get the way we would like but that is the job, Other clubs have had to do rebuilding jobs – we hope it won’t take as long as some others but we have a period of time to get to that level.”

20/04/14 Everton (A) 0-2
“I thought we did well, were the better team at 2-0 down in the first half.
“We’ll do everything we can to win the remaining four games. We are under way with what we are doing to improve next season and try to give ourselves a better chance to compete at the top end of the table.”

“You bastard.”

I know the man can’t be blunt in criticizing his players and that Tim Sherwood style “I’m not playing Cleverley because he’s been rubbish lately” wouldn’t be Manchester United, but you really see the picture of the Scot slumped over in his chair massaging his temples repeating “It’ll be OK… it’ll be OK…” over and over again.

So, in the previous blog entry about Moyes I made it clear that we should judge David Moyes on 14-15 season, but the Manchester United board have not had the patience, and after the Everton game I’m inclined to believe the fans have lost theirs as well. Ultimately it’s perhaps daft that we’ll never know what he and Ed Woodward could have done in the transfer window, but maybe the appropriate appointment forthcoming will set matters straight. “Restore United from the ashes” is a more tempting challenge than “replace the irreplaceable” after all.

Well, you didn’t think I’d make it all the way to the end without ONE allusion to Ferguson… did you?

The Many Myths of Moyes (well…. four)

Yes, my first entry is a football one, and it isn’t to do with the Mighty Spurs. I’m sure the Tottenham-related posts will outnumber the others as we go on, but after watching the League Cup semi-final first legs over the last two nights, when I turned on my thought percolator, this is what bubbled up.

Here are my thoughts on all the nonsense being spouted about David Moyes at the moment, from a neutral’s point of view. He’s in the papers a lot at present, having just lost three games on the bounce, to my beloved Tottenham in the Premier League, Swansea in the FA Cup, and Sunderland in the League Cup. Many things are being stated, including some naked facts without any context, to either criticize or support the Manchester United manager, and I fancy debunking a few of these myths as well as stating my own opinion. Remember – Spurs fan here, with neither affinity nor hatred towards the club, even though I freely admit liking them as a football club in terms of business model, footballing ethos and so forth. Clearly, I would prefer them to win the Premier League than any of the teams currently looking like having a chance of doing so. Having said that, I feel suitably unbiased in my assessment.

So here are some myths I’ve heard from both sides of the coin.

Myth #1 : (Prior to Sunderland) David Moyes lost fewer of his first 31 games in charge than some other lauded United managers (Moyes-7 Busby-8 Ferguson-9 Atkinson-9 Docherty-12 Sexton-13) so that proves he’s not actually doing that bad a job.
Reality : None of those managers inherited a league title winning squad filled with internationals and European cup winners, so the bare facts actually prove nothing.

Myth #2 : Moyes let United down by not doing better business in the transfer window, in particular signing Marouane Fellaini and nobody else of note.
Reality : Ed Woodward took charge of United’s transfer business (of lack thereof) in the summer, including the Cesc Fabregas debacle. Moyes had little say in it. People state that Moyes “took Fellaini with him from Everton” as though he were first choice, but that only happened when the deals that Woodward tried to broker for Fabregas, Mesut Özil and Luka Modric failed to bare fruit.

Myth #3 : Alex Ferguson only got the team to 11th in his first season in charge, so Moyes shouldn’t be judged yet.
Reality : Alex Ferguson took over the team well into the 86-87 season (November) with the team stuttering and threatened with relegation. Moyes started with a clean slate. While I agree that Moyes needs time to really make an impression on what is still near enough somebody else’s squad, that particular comparison is meaningless.

Myth #4 : Moyes should be doing better with the team he inherited.
Reality : (deep breath)

Winning the league with that squad papered over some cracks that Ferguson might have addressed before leaving. He’s basically inherited a team of players that :

(A) have never lived up to expectations – Nani, Anderson, Young, Valencia, Kagawa, Jones, Smalling ;

(B) are nearing the end of their usefulness – Vidic, Giggs, Evra, Ferdinand ;

(C) have had a lot of injury/illness problems – RvP, Fletcher ;

(D) are dramatically overrated due to their consistent appearances for a poor England side – Welbeck, Cleverley ;

(E) and Wayne Rooney, who is none of the above. Unsurprisingly, he has been Moyes’ best player this term.

To my mind, only van Persie’s goals, Joe Hart’s loss of form and Roberto Mancini’s ridiculous decision to split up the TITLE WINNING centre-back partnership of Vincent Kompany & Joleon Lescott prevented Manchester City from retaining the title, much as people might want to say it was Fergie being great. That side SHOULDN’T have won the title. It should have done marginally better than it is now, and it did, because van Persie for once stayed fit for most of the season. This season, obviously, he hasn’t. My point is, the team he inherited isn’t as good as a lot of people want to believe, and a lot of the blame has to fall at the feet of Woodward for being so utterly inept in the summer transfer market, especially concerning the Fabregas debacle.

The main problem that Moyes’ United have had (aside from one or two games – Southampton springs to mind – where his substitutions have been too negative on a one-goal lead) is that simply, the fear factor is gone. Technically you can point to giving the ball away cheaply on the edge of their own box, but that’s a confidence issue. United don’t have it, their opponents increasingly do. Teams that play Manchester United – even at Old Trafford – know before the game they have a chance of winning, and at 1-0 down in 2014 they know they still have a chance of salvaging something, whereas in years gone by conceding the first goal at the Theatre of Dreams was usually tantamount to conceding defeat itself. The message has been put out there – United away is a game you can win. West Brom have done it. Newcastle have done it. Everton have done it. Spurs have done it. Swansea have done it.

How you arrest that is simple, in theory. You win football games, the team grows in confidence, that confidence begets more victories. For that to happen, the team needs improvement. Most will suggest that the kind of quality of player that Manchester United would hope to attract in January is almost-exclusively not available in January, that most of the true quality out there comprises of players happy at their clubs, and at clubs unwilling to sell. I’d suggest there is one exception : Juan Mata.

While record-setting Frank Lampard and the exciting Eden Hazard may have garnered most of the attention and plaudits last season (well, when the latter wasn’t kicking ball boys), it is my conjecture that Mata was Chelsea’s best player, and yet he seems resigned to play a bit part in Jose Mourinho’s second spell in charge at Kings Road. With the strength in depth of attacking or creative players at his disposal – Lampard, Hazard, Oscar, Schürrle, De Bruyne, van Ginkel – Jose may be persuaded to let Mata leave. While the Spaniard has been a model pro in his comments regarding his status at Stamford Bridge, there was no hiding his contempt at being substituted during the Southampton game, and no player with World Cup aspirations wants to spend the next five months on the bench. For anyone suggesting Mourinho is too proud/arrogant to sell a player he officially insists IS a part of his plans, I put it to you that for the right price, Mourinho might be tempted to part with the influential midfielder, to get rid of a want-away player and give himself chance to come out in the press afterwards and declare “I will not sell to title rivals, but Manchester United are not a rival right now.” Come on ; that’s exactly the sort of thing he’d do, isn’t it?

Back to David Moyes – yes, it is too early to judge him. The club has already made it clear he will still be at the helm in the summer no matter what, and in the summer is when he will be judged, as it is expected that he will have far more influence in the players that United approach. 14-15 will be a truer indication of what “David Moyes’ Manchester United” will actually look like going forward, and personally speaking, I’m fascinated at the thought of what calibre player the club will be able to attract, especially if they have neither the cache of “come play for Sir Alex Ferguson” OR Champions League football to offer.

Sorry for that last bit, Stretford Enders, but it’s a possibility that shouldn’t be ignored.