10 years ago today David Moyes was announced as manager

[Revan]

It seemed to me that United had a very short list of succession candidates, got rejected by all of them, had no plausible Plan B and so ended up having to talk up the steady Eddie Everton manager on the basis he also came from Glasgow.

I think this is trying to rewrite history by Fergie. All the briefings back then, SAF’s book, the original interviews by the other managers show that Moyes was the only candidate considered for the job. We did not talk with other managers except that meeting in New York when Fergie hinted to Pep that he might leave but there wasn’t more than that. We didn’t meet Klopp or Mourinho, we likely didn’t meet Ancelotti.

We wanted Moyes and it was such an idiotic decision that we deserved 10 years of misery just cause of being so braindead.

Only after ‘the chosen one/your job is to support the manager’ shown to be shit, we started saying that every manager rejected us. Which was nonsense.

 

[MoskvaRed]

I think this is trying to rewrite history by Fergie. All the briefings back then, SAF’s book, the original interviews by the other managers show that Moyes was the only candidate considered for the job. We did not talk with other managers except that meeting in New York when Fergie hinted to Pep that he might leave but there wasn’t more than that. We didn’t meet Klopp or Mourinho, we likely didn’t meet Ancelotti.

We wanted Moyes and it was such an idiotic decision that we deserved 10 years of misery just cause of being so braindead.

If true (and you might be right), then it defies any rational explanation. Why pick a manager who had never won a trophy, never managed at Champions League level, never been poached from his relatively modest club and who had in fact stagnated at Everton by 2013?

 

[Red Star One]

If true (and you might be right), then it defies any rational explanation. Why pick a manager who had never won a trophy, never managed at Champions League level, never been poached from his relatively modest club and who had in fact stagnated at Everton by 2013?

This is the story of our demise and perhaps the most damaging thing Sir Alex has done to the club. I think after 10 years it's safe to say Moyes would never become our manager if it wasn't for a personal recommendation from Sir Alex, and SAF was such a strong figure that his opinion wouldn't be doubted at all, he had that genius aura and we all believed there's no way he would've gotten it wrong. Maybe it was a hint of exceptionalism and belief that United doesn't need an established foreign manager like Mourinho, Klopp or Guardiola, but that we will be able to replicate the SAF story and create another GOAT ourselves, Moyes was also with Everton for over 10 years, and SAF wanted someone very long term like him? Perhaps even a genius like Sir Alex was prone to some arrogance at the end of his stage, since he was winning the league with a not-so-great squad he underestimated how quickly the opposition is catching up? If you read his comments how he believed he is leaving us "in a great shape", even with so many staff changes and Gill leaving, it makes you wonder if we were not too naïve in thinking the success is bound to come just because we're Man United.

 

[theralyst]

The year we joined the echelons of Arsenal as a banter club and haven't really ever shaken that off since. The aura around the club has dissipated.

 

[united_99]

I dislike Moyes as much as anyone but after 1 season the club went as far away as possible from „Scottish“, „long term“ or „PL proven“, etc. by hiring LvG and things still hardly got any better.
Moyes was a disaster but the failures of an entire decade since are hardly his fault.

 

[redshaw]

How fitting Moyes' West Ham defeat is our latest result residing over our Moyes 10 year anniversary period, like it was written in the stars.

Even the result of 1-0 can make a 10. It's eerie as Sir Alex standing on the pitch with a mic telling the fans to get behind Moyes. The only remaining Fergie signing on the pitch in De Gea helping it into the net.

Perhaps the curse is finally wrapped up.

 

[Tom Van Persie]

I think this is trying to rewrite history by Fergie. All the briefings back then, SAF’s book, the original interviews by the other managers show that Moyes was the only candidate considered for the job. We did not talk with other managers except that meeting in New York when Fergie hinted to Pep that he might leave but there wasn’t more than that. We didn’t meet Klopp or Mourinho, we likely didn’t meet Ancelotti.

We wanted Moyes and it was such an idiotic decision that we deserved 10 years of misery just cause of being so braindead.

Only after ‘the chosen one/your job is to support the manager’ shown to be shit, we started saying that every manager rejected us. Which was nonsense.

Ancelotti wrote in his book that he met with SAF. I don't think the Moyes appointment was as straight forward as the original briefings suggested. They were obviously looking at other possibilities.

 

[TheRedDevil'sAdvocate]

If true (and you might be right), then it defies any rational explanation. Why pick a manager who had never won a trophy, never managed at Champions League level, never been poached from his relatively modest club and who had in fact stagnated at Everton by 2013?

Probably because, just like Liverpool in the 90s, we believed that we were special enough to create/make someone a top-class manager. Don't forget that LvG was also appointed on the premise that he would groom Giggs for the role. There's also the way everyone in and around United shielded Solskjaer. Even with Mourinho, we handed him a new contract (which led to a huge severance package) after his two season cycle was complete and he basically was asking to leave. I'm with Revan on this one. You don't give the guy who's supposedly way down on your list a six-year deal. The club obviously believed that Moyes was the man to assume the mantle after SAF's retirement.

 

[The Corinthian]

You don't give the guy who's supposedly way down on your list a six-year deal.

That could just be an Ed Woodward special though.

 

[TheRedDevil'sAdvocate]

That could just be an Ed Woodward special though.

It could be but, at the time, Woodward was actually lauded for putting a condition on Moyes' contract that, should he fail to qualify for the CL, he would be sacked with only a year's severance pay. Anyway, it's baffling how Moyes' name was even on the list of candidates. And i doubt Ed - United are the modern Disneyland - Woodward was the one who put it there in the first place.

 

[MoskvaRed]

Probably because, just like Liverpool in the 90s, we believed that we were special enough to create/make someone a top-class manager. Don't forget that LvG was also appointed on the premise that he would groom Giggs for the role. There's also the way everyone in and around United shielded Solskjaer. Even with Mourinho, we handed him a new contract (which led to a huge severance package) after his two season cycle was complete and he basically was asking to leave. I'm with Revan on this one. You don't give the guy who's supposedly way down on your list a six-year deal. The club obviously believed that Moyes was the man to assume the mantle after SAF's retirement.

I forgot about the Giggs plan. More madness, on a par with the FA’s plan for Capello to develop Pierce as a successor. It’s like the club lost contact with reality by virtue of having a genius in charge for a quarter of a century.

 

[Muninman]

I think this is trying to rewrite history by Fergie. All the briefings back then, SAF’s book, the original interviews by the other managers show that Moyes was the only candidate considered for the job. We did not talk with other managers except that meeting in New York when Fergie hinted to Pep that he might leave but there wasn’t more than that. We didn’t meet Klopp or Mourinho, we likely didn’t meet Ancelotti.

We wanted Moyes and it was such an idiotic decision that we deserved 10 years of misery just cause of being so braindead.

Only after ‘the chosen one/your job is to support the manager’ shown to be shit, we started saying that every manager rejected us. Which was nonsense.

I'm with Revan too. There may well have been a few speculative conversations, but it seems likely that the club gave SAR free rein to appoint his successor, hence the personal touch and the long contract. Regarding Mourinho, there were reports that he was upset about not being offered the job, so that suggests at the very least that he was not seriously considered. . One thing that has not been mentioned much in this thread is that CE David Gill left at the same time as Fergie, so there would probably have been something of a power vacuum. I'm not sure of the exact timing of the takeover, but I doubt Woodward would have had much say in this appointment one way or the other.

 

[Big Ben Foster]

It’s Woodward and the Glazers that did the damage over those 10 years though…

The Moyes appointment was utterly ridiculous and negligent and obviously pathetic and idiotic from the get go, but it was one stupid decision that if reversed swiftly and then followed by a couple of even passable decisions with a good infrastructure in place, Utd would’ve been fine.

Likewise, the vast money spent over the last 10 years - if spent with a structure like, say, Brighton’s or even a Brentford or Palace, Utd would now be a terrifying force in World football.

That’s what really did the damage, and that’s all Woodward and the Glazers - all of it.

How they’ve not been chased out of the club is as sad as it is baffling.

Moyes was never an elite manager, and I never even viewed him as a Utd manager, as with Ole tbh.

It’s like I never viewed Maguire as a Utd captain.

But it’s not Moyes’ doing, he coulda been sacked after 6 months, and then the situation easily fixed.

Spot on. Big clubs make poor managerial appointments all the time - some with even less pedigree than Moyes (Lampard? Solari? Setien?). With the right structure in place, these decisions are easily reversible and the damage is limited.

 

[altodevil]

Really wanted Mourinho and was a bit gutted we didn't get him. Didn't like the Moyes decision at the time, but before the start of the season I was a bit more optimistic even with no new signings.

 

[MoskvaRed]

0-1 down at half time. If Moyes can’t win the Conference this year, then he’ll retire without a trophy (Community Shield doesn’t count when another manager won the league for you).

 

[stevoc]

It seemed to me that United had a very short list of succession candidates, got rejected by all of them, had no plausible Plan B and so ended up having to talk up the steady Eddie Everton manager on the basis he also came from Glasgow.

It's worse than that, I genuinely believe Moyes was Fergie's first choice.

 

[stevoc]

Ancelotti wrote in his book that he met with SAF. I don't think the Moyes appointment was as straight forward as the original briefings suggested. They were obviously looking at other possibilities.

The time lines of that never really matched up from what I can remember. By late into the 12/13 season everyone knew Carlo was going to Real, a lot of people in the game probably knew about it before Fergie had even decided to retire. SAF often met with other coaches for lunch/dinner doesn't necessarily mean he was offered the United job. He met Klopp around the same time in 2013 but Klopp insists he wasn't offered the job.

 

[stevoc]

Probably because, just like Liverpool in the 90s, we believed that we were special enough to create/make someone a top-class manager. Don't forget that LvG was also appointed on the premise that he would groom Giggs for the role. There's also the way everyone in and around United shielded Solskjaer. Even with Mourinho, we handed him a new contract (which led to a huge severance package) after his two season cycle was complete and he basically was asking to leave. I'm with Revan on this one. You don't give the guy who's supposedly way down on your list a six-year deal. The club obviously believed that Moyes was the man to assume the mantle after SAF's retirement.

Indeed.

 

[adexkola]

0-1 down at half time. If Moyes can’t win the Conference this year, then he’ll retire without a trophy (Community Shield doesn’t count when another manager won the league for you).

2-1 at full time

 

[adexkola]

I dont understand why everyone keeps blaming moyes for the decade worth of failure. Moyes was just the tip of the iceberg. The catastrophe started happening when Woodward decided to throw money on average players, without having any vision of the kind of football we needed to play. He even hired managers with polar opposite footballing philosophies.

Moyes only got a couple of signings in where both of them arguably performed better compared to the dross we signed in the following seasons.

Scapegoaters gonna scapegoat.

If Moyes was the single point of failure then we should have rebounded quickly after his sacking. That we didn't...

 

[ayushreddevil9]

Those are clubs that have been set up so that managers can slot in and out easily with far less control over off pitch affairs.

We weren't. We had a different structure that worked just as well, and Moyes ripped it up. Yes we have been shit at putting in a new structure but it's his fault we wrecked what we had.

The only structure we had was SAF. Us, as fans never really bothered to dive deeper into how the club functioned because we had a legendary manager that shielded the incompetence of our club's owners and the board. Remember "No value in the market" quote? The very well working structure you talk about brought in Valencia and some other duds when Ronaldo left. Rooney handed in a transfer request because of how poor we were in the market. There were cracks starting to show up even during the latter years of SAF as our manager.

We dont have to pretend that everything was fine and rosy behind the scenes before Moyes took over.

 

[ayushreddevil9]

Scapegoaters gonna scapegoat.

If Moyes was the single point of failure then we should have rebounded quickly after his sacking. That we didn't...

Yeah people making comments like "he did irreparable damage" but cant state what that damage was. What was the damage that couldn't be undone? Other clubs have no issues rebounding then what was stopping Utd?

 

[MoskvaRed]

2-1 at full time

I take it all back,. Get him signed on a 6 year contract.

To be honest, I don’t begrudge him success. It’s not his fault he was over-promoted and, realistically, you can’t expect him to say “yes I was useless and in over my head”.

 

[jm99]

Scapegoaters gonna scapegoat.

If Moyes was the single point of failure then we should have rebounded quickly after his sacking. That we didn't...

I don't think moyes was the right choice, but equally he didn't get much funds and isn't totally to blame. However I do feel a better manager could have maybe squeezed another season out of the players and started to bed in new signings, and would have realised the task on hand, but once the players were done that was it, at their age they weren't going to come back. We needed someone who'd come in, recognise the scale of the rebuild needed and start fixing the areas most in need. Moyes let the rot start to set in, and we've been trying to fix it ever sense. Part of the blame should go to ferguson, he shouldn't have left a new manager with a rebuild of basically an entire first xi needed, and this was obviously mainly down to the Glazers still paying off the debt and not investing in the team

 

[jm99]

Yeah people making comments like "he did irreparable damage" but cant state what that damage was. What was the damage that couldn't be undone? Other clubs have no issues rebounding then what was stopping Utd?

For me the issue was the years of Glazers under investment by that point had left us needing a whole new first xi, the fact that we basically brought in no replacements and everyone was a year older the next summer when we actually started to rebuild it meant we didn't have time to bed in new signings we needed to try and bring in 5 players in a summer etc

 

[redmanx]

What ever the reasons Moyes becam our manager and who ever pushed for him to be is now immaterial, and also a period Ive been trying to forget!

 

[LDUred]

There was a stat showing the similarity between Moyes's record after 20 games of a season at Everton and his record as United manager.

Appointing a manager like Moyes undoubtedly set the tone for mediocrity and failure at United. Putting Fergie in the position of kingmaker was a calmitous decision and he should never have been able to handpick his successor in the first place.

I know that Moyes didn't do that much material damage to the club, but his appointment smashed the aura to pieces.

 

[Tom Van Persie]

A few days after the appointment of Moyes was Fergie's last game at OT and the day we lifted our 20th league title.

 

[shamans]

0-1 down at half time. If Moyes can’t win the Conference this year, then he’ll retire without a trophy (Community Shield doesn’t count when another manager won the league for you).

Is he retiring after this? I hope not. I will always be a fan of Moyes one of the most underrated British managers around

 

[shamans]

Scapegoaters gonna scapegoat.

If Moyes was the single point of failure then we should have rebounded quickly after his sacking. That we didn't...

Some people truly believe those 6-7 months "set the tone" for the next decade and we couldn't recover since. It's baffling.

 

[BorisManUtd]

Back then we obviously didn't know if Moyes is gonna be right man for the job but I think there was no single fan that thought it would go so horribly wrong. Ageing squad and everything but it was still a shock. I even remember United fan in Africa even commited suicide after one of the losses.

 

[sunama]

If we only knew what was to come...

I knew what we were in for.
At first I thought it was a joke, but when I saw it on the back page on The Sun, that Moyes IS the new manager of MUFC, I could not fathom why.
We were going from the most decorated manager in EPL history to a manager who had never won a single trophy.
It made no sense!

As time went on, what I predicted, came to pass.
What did shock me was that he was sacked 10 months after being hired. I thought Woodward would allow him to rebuild in the Summer.
Luckily, he got fired.
He is now at a club which is in 15th place (ie. mid-bottom table). This is his true level.

We would later hire Ole, whose claim to fame was getting Cardiff relegated and then getting fired in the Championship. Once Ole left MUFC, no other EPL club came calling. He really was managing a club that he was not qualified for.

Anyway, I think it's time to move on but know this, I will never forgive what Moyes did - that guy deserves all the vitriol he gets.

 

[sunama]

Scapegoaters gonna scapegoat.

If Moyes was the single point of failure then we should have rebounded quickly after his sacking. That we didn't...

He absolutely was.
We had a title winning team, with players who were all leaders. No exception.
They were trained to win. That's what they did.

Moyes came in, sacked the backroom staff, who knew how to win. And he replaced them with Everton backroom staff, who were proven losers.
After that initial year, when we finished 7th, the winning mentality was gone.

Older players eventually got sold and those who remained got used to losing.
Eventually, all our trophy winning players would be sold and replaced by players who find it acceptable to not win trophies. To find it acceptable to lose to teams at the bottom of the table. In Fergie's times, we would humiliate the teams at the foot of the table. We would ship 7 goals past those types of teams.

Sadly, the winning mentality is gone and even the fans now, believe that 4th place is some sort of achievement/trophy.
Let me tell you, 4th place, for a club of our size is absolute failure!!!

 

[Tom Van Persie]

 

[ShinjiNinja26]

Hope the hammers get hammered.

 

[el3mel]

I hope he wins it. He has made a great comeback after his reputation has gone completely down hill post United and up to the Sunderland job. Since then he has steadily restored a big part of his reputation. He is a good manager, just not Man United level, but he's still a good for midtable clubs, beside there's nothing really to dislike about the guy as a person or as a manager. He did his best here but the job was overwhelming for what he used to.