David Moyes Unemployed | European Champion
- Thread starter Damien
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Late concessions when he was at United too. I remember Everton at home, late Everton winner with Fellaini on the pitch and Moyes on the side, a perfect image of everything gone wrong, and then the infamous Fulham 2-2.
His go-to substitution when losing/drawing seemed to be Rafael for a winger (Nani or Januzaj) with Valencia moving to RB, and then that RB spot becomes a glaring hole to shoot or cross from.
e - just checked and he made that exact substitution in the everton game
Has he now finally got an away win against United, Liverpool, Chelsea or Arsenal (one of the old top 4?)
Depends on whether you count games that go to shootouts as a draw or a win for the team who wins the spot kicks.
If the latter then it's his second, his Everton side knocked us out of the FA Cup on pens at Stamford Bridge in 2011.
Let's be honest he's right though, Ole has guided a side to Champions League qualification twice in each of his two full Premier League seasons.
Moyes hasn't managed it once in what 14-15 full PL seasons.
No white text?
Ole may be a 'better' fit for Utd than Moyes but that doesn't make him a better manager.
Would Ole get Everton/West Ham battling for Top Four like Moyes did/has?
Agree.
Moyes doesn't have the character, charisma, and ultimately the know how in man management for bigger (CL level) clubs, and bigger ego. However, for the mid level table, his comfortable zone, he has ability to build his own team, and imprint his football.
Ole being our legend, and a player under SAF, has a competent level of the know how to man manage our players. He knows how important to have someone like Phelan from SAF's time around the club. However, ultimately since football has to move forward, Ole needs to build his own football, not just relying on old ides from SAF. SAF is never standing still, he adapt, and improve himself and his football over time. Ole tried this copy paste approach at Cardiff and it failed miserably, as different scenario, resource, would require different approach and know how, coaching ability, man management.
Based on the squad he's built and the job he's done at United quite possibly yes. Solskjaer did a good job at Molde too where he won titles and cups. So while you could never say for certain I think he's certainly capable of it.
You could say Moyes is a better mid-table manager he's certainly more experienced and I'd agree. Based on experience and mid-table finishes Moyes must be the best mid-table manager in the history of the Premier League. He's finished mid-table in most of his Premier League seasons even with United.
But taking a team that's been mid-table for a few years, getting them to finish 3rd. Then building upon that and improving to a 2nd place finish the next season while going unbeaten away from home. And looking like he might sustain or who knows even improve on that again. That's not something Moyes has ever shown himself capable of.
So we can all have our own opinions on who we think is the better manager but someone suggesting they think Solskjaer is better shouldn't warrant green smiley faces as a response.
Wish him well just not when he plays against us. Seems like a good guy, but i like Ole more given that he played for us so much and knows the club and culture.
I for sure like him more than Lvg and Jose despite the awful spell.
I for sure like him more than Lvg and Jose despite the awful spell.
Would moyes get United into the champions league I wonder, with a championship winning team no less.
Better put in inverted commas. there’s some nonsense posted on this forum.
You put it as if we're established as a consistent mid table team and finished 4th, and 2nd in 2 seasons under LVG, and Mourinho are odd occasions. Especially LVG's second season, finishing as 5th on same point with previous year champion!
Ole's point tally for third place finish in 19/20 wouldn't get him in top 4 in Mourinho first season. Mourinho's point tally for his second place finish would have him challenge City for last season. Last season point tally hardly a standard for title challenge in almost "normal" seasons.
There is a huge difference between challenging and fall short even 3rd or 4th place in the end; and just finish as second place loser. There is no building from that 3rd to 2nd place in that context.
The away record is nice and all, but it's masking an issue with our home form. Why such feat meets and the overall result, standard is still low? Because our home form is awful. And just like the "invincible" Arsenal, it doesn't tell the whole story. They we're not invincible that season in other competitions. So were we that we lost key away games in other competitions.
It's not like it would go on forever, and we can rely and build on our PL away game record setting streak. Are we taking enough step with our home game?
Agree on Moyes part.
Let's face it mate we were a consistent mid-table team post Ferguson. Let's be honest here, bar one season where Jose finished 2nd we never looked like finishing comfortably in the CL spots.
We finished 7th, 4th (just about), 5th, 6th, 2nd and I think we were 6th when Solskjaer took over and looking like we would have finished lower than even that, certainly not higher anyway.
Comparing points tallies between seasons mate is Irrelevant. It's a league competition every team plays each other home and away, you could win the league with 75-80 points or come 3rd on 85-90. Which is why it's pointless to compare across seasons. Your finish and points total can only be judged within the season that it happens.
Anyway we're off topic but my point was Solskjaer has taken a mid-table team that started every season with the fans hoping we could maybe come top 4. And turned it around to now where we are hoping we can win the league and top 4 seems an after thought. Moyes has never done that in his career to date, so while some think he's the better manager, that's fine but it's certainly debateable.
He took over a team that finished second the season before.
I think the green smiley faces wasn't at the simple suggestion that Ole may be better, it was 'Moyes isn't fit to lace his boots', which to me suggests they are not comparable and there's massive gulf in difference. That is the bit I have 'issue' with.
I agree we're going to have differing opinions but my point was there's more nuanced than saying Ole has achieved more than Moyes.
Moyes doesn't have the pedigree (i.e playing under Sir Alex and seeing first hand for years what running a massive club means) but had he been given the benefit of the doubt like Ole has e.g the resignation and recognition that we needed a rebuild and was backed with time and hundreds of millions of pounds to spend (don't forget he wanted Kroos, Bale, Fabregas etc), it may not be a stretch to think he may have stumbled on some 'success'; the same kind LVG or even Mourinho have achieved. Moyes' time here was a disaster but the timing of a new CEO and the underinvested squad made it a poisoned chalice. Ole's success here thus far is being made of the right stuff and building a very good squad, which is an underrated aspect of his but to date, he has won nothing and his ability to get us continously improving is a not a foregon conclusion. He simply has to show this season he can win big stuff or challenge to the very end with anything less being deemed a failure imo.
Again I don't really have a strong opinion on who is 'better', I just think both managers deserve equal praise and criticism with context.
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So were United the 2nd best team in England circa 18/19 or a team that were languishing in 6th and had been struggling to even get into the top 4 for years bar one season?
Well with that poster I'm not so sure but yeah fair enough there isn't a gulf between their achievements right now and the ''not fit to lace his boots'' was an exaggeration as I said it's fine if someone thinks either is better.
You see for me Moyes was given time and was backed financially. He spent what was it £75-80m? and the club were willing to fund his moves for Fabregas and a world record for Bale they just didn't pan out. He was also given a almost a full season where no one expected him to win the league but it shouldn't have been a huge task to finish 4th with the talent and experience he had at his disposal. He lead a squad that had never finished below 2nd to 7th, out of the CL places, not even qualifying for the Europa League (the first United manager in over 30 years to not qualify for Europe) and only winning 2-3 matches vs the top 10 over the entire season, 2-3 wins out of 18 games is abysmal by any metric. Without even going into the off the pitch stuff where he lost the dressing room and alienated people, going just off the teams performance he had to go.
Solskjaer in a shorter period of time took over a club in a bad spot with an unhappy squad and really negative mood around the place. He steadied the ship, got them playing decent football and improved morale now while they finished 6th in 2019 under Mourinho it was looking like we were going to finish much lower than that. So Solskjaer earned his contract and justified it by finishing 3rd the next season, had he failed to qualify for the CL then just like Moyes and LVG he would have got the boot. These managers (yes including Moyes) take the job knowing 4th is the minimum that is expected, if you finish below that then they have zero ground for complaints if they get sacked.
We were a team that sacked our manager for being in that position. If the team was mid table then Mourinho must’ve been overachieving to finish second.
Jose himself seems to think he did and looking at the side put out last night with 4 Mourinho signings and another 3 players who played regularly for him maybe he had a point. The squad Solskjaer took over was in a bloated mess.
https://www.espn.co.uk/football/man...h-manchester-united-among-my-top-achievements
Anyone with a modicum of football knowledge knows it is harder going from being a journeyman player, working your way through the leagues off your own back to the Premier League and then building something of a dynasty at a club like Everton than doing what Ole has done.
Ferguson had groomed Moyes for years and we had him out of the door without so much as a season to get his bearings. And for what, to protect the egos of past-it pros like Rio? Great player, but he was finished and should not have been allowed to influence the dressing room to the extent he did.
Rather than having Moyes carefully restructure the side, we fired him and had LVG take a wrecking ball to the squad, which we have never recovered from. Moyes has West Ham playing excellent, structured, cohesive football. I think he would have done very well here in time.
Anyone with a modicum of football knowledge knows it is harder going from being a journeyman player, working your way through the leagues off your own back to the Premier League and then building something of a dynasty at a club like Everton than doing what Ole has done.
It's debateable but let's speak facts Moyes took over a United in a better position than Solskjaer did and he had the British press in his corner and despite that he folded like a cheap suit and looked a broken man within 6 months as he couldn't handle the pressure. He just doesn't have the personality or character for such a big job, give Moyes 6 or even 16 years and he wouldn't have been able to do what Solskjaer has at United. He's just not cut out for it.
Ferdinand was leaving either way so he wasn't the reason Moyes was sacked. No Moyes was booted out the door not only because he wasn't good enough but because he was a disaster. I detailed above just how bad he was, worst United manager since Dave Sexton.
He obviously wouldn't have, circa 2014 he seemed done at top level management and was a broken man. Fair play to him he's rebuilt his career but it's took him the best part of a decade just to get himself back together and where he was before the United job. Managing a decent mid-table side after the disasters at United, Sociedad and Sunderland.
Agree on LVG though great manager but past it and we shouldn't have allowed him to gut the squad in such a short space of time.
I just want to say David Moyes had us playing shit football and brought all those unwanted records.
TBF what he's doing with Westham is fine, but we all know their expectation of him is low, their only ambition at this point is getting into UCL or play their way to the Europa League Final which I don't see happening.
TBF what he's doing with Westham is fine, but we all know their expectation of him is low, their only ambition at this point is getting into UCL or play their way to the Europa League Final which I don't see happening.
Moyes was absolutely diabolical at United. I think with time some of the intricacies get forgotten and you see him doing well and the inclination is to think he could have done the same as Ole, or maybe he needed more time. At the time he had very few supporters such was his awful brand of football and naivety. I think that is what many that think he was sacked early forget, they are looking at Moyes through a different lens than existed at the time. He was by far the worst post Ferguson appointment.
He had a few major problems, the first being he didn't seem to have the gravitas and ability to command the respect of big players. In fact I don't even think this is big players, judging by his time in Spain I'd say it's any situation where there are obstacles to him moulding the side with some kind of plucky underdog/siege mentality. Here the club was far too big for that and he probably struggled with the language barrier in Spain.
Tactically, he had no vision for football at the top ends of the table. The Fulham (H) fixture lives long in the memory when we spent a full game providing their centre backs heading practice. It was far from the only example. To be blunt we went from finishing 2nd to playing a mid table style of football. You can say what you want about his successors but it was only with Moyes that we saw this complete stylistic regression. You can say that LVG or Jose were boring, and you would be right but they held us to a far higher standard. You can criticise individual decisions or the overall direction of Ole's football, but never would you confuse us for Everton FC.
Moyes at United was akin to Hodgson at Liverpool. As every week passed it was clear it was a match made in hell.
He had a few major problems, the first being he didn't seem to have the gravitas and ability to command the respect of big players. In fact I don't even think this is big players, judging by his time in Spain I'd say it's any situation where there are obstacles to him moulding the side with some kind of plucky underdog/siege mentality. Here the club was far too big for that and he probably struggled with the language barrier in Spain.
Tactically, he had no vision for football at the top ends of the table. The Fulham (H) fixture lives long in the memory when we spent a full game providing their centre backs heading practice. It was far from the only example. To be blunt we went from finishing 2nd to playing a mid table style of football. You can say what you want about his successors but it was only with Moyes that we saw this complete stylistic regression. You can say that LVG or Jose were boring, and you would be right but they held us to a far higher standard. You can criticise individual decisions or the overall direction of Ole's football, but never would you confuse us for Everton FC.
Moyes at United was akin to Hodgson at Liverpool. As every week passed it was clear it was a match made in hell.
Nope. LVG did far more damage. He completely decimated the squad. The fact he was never an actual DOF was pretty obvious going by his signings. Thought it was a good idea to veto the Kroos signing.
LVG is a far more accomplished manager. If he had been left in charge he probably would have kept us there and there abouts around the top 4 and he won us a trophy too.
David Moyes had us heading towards mid table and competing for nothing so I think to say this is total nonsense based on how the sides performed.
Not interested in whether he vetoed Kroos or individual decisions, based on what I saw on the football pitch and his demeanor around the club Moyes was by far the weakest we've had and it's borne out in their accomplishments in football too.
LVG and Mourinho were terrible cultural fits and probably both past it but Moyes has never been a top manager and that's the difference.
Who is more accomplished is neither here nor there. Moyes was unable to do substantial damage, as he was not here a long enough time to do much either way. Results were poor overall, but that is as much due to the fact we had lost the key figure behind our success and the wheels falling off an ageing squad.
LVG got a massive budge and carte blanche. He carried out much more damaging actions in terms of recruitment. When Moyes left we still had the same squad, plus Mata and Fellaini. The fact is, these two signings were reasonably successful over the years as they were both used by all of Moyes's successors. Fellaini in particular was key to European and FA Cup wins.
What Van Gaal did completely changed the culture of the club. Most of his signings were awful as well.
As for Ole vs. Moyes, West Ham again fought from the first to the last today, and got their rewards. They look an actual team, rather than a bunch of expensively assembled individuals with no cohesion.
Moyes really has West Ham playing well. They never got out of second gear and should have been 3-0 up at half-time.
I am really impressed by the cohesiveness of their play. They can play within themselves now and get results by playing in spurts. The sign of a good side.
Funny how everyone goes on about Rodgers, but Moyes has West Ham playing far better football. I guess he never won the league with Celtic!
I am really impressed by the cohesiveness of their play. They can play within themselves now and get results by playing in spurts. The sign of a good side.
Funny how everyone goes on about Rodgers, but Moyes has West Ham playing far better football. I guess he never won the league with Celtic!
Yes his actions were more damaging in terms of transfers. It's always going to be the case that when a manager is sacked for performance related reasons then the longer serving ones have more potential to cause future issues as they've made far more decisions. LVG and Mourinho both left us with a mess to clear up. Many managers do, they rarely get sacked because things are wonderful.
But that doesn't necessarily fully indicate who the better manager was during their respective tenures because it also comes down to winning games, what does doing as little damage as possible mean as you break unwanted records left right and centre? It's not the best defence of Moyes when the most we can say is he had little time to continue a fairly horrendous demise into what appeared to be turning us into Everton.
We played better, we won something with LVG. Things were going a bit pear shaped but he probably could have maintained the status quo over the coming years in terms of being in and around the top 4 because he's a good manager with a little credit in the bank that says he's a manager for a top club.
For these reasons I would take LVG back of the two and hope we had a better structure in place for transfers. That's possible, making Moyes a manager for a big club probably isn't ever going to happen.
It's one thing to be a manager of a team that is expected to attack against 99% of the teams and quite another to be a manager of a team that does not carry that weight of expectation. Moyes clearly has the skills to be a very accomplished manager for teams that belong to the latter category.
To be fair to Rodgers, he also has an FA Cup with a non-traditional top 4 side and came within a game or so of giving Liverpool their first ever PL title. He also was obscenely dominant at Celtic. It was a great job.
Moyes has failures at United, Sunderland and Sociedad between his two quality PL runs, which means he has had more failures than successes at top flight football clubs. They can’t just be written off because of the conditions of those teams. It was his job to do better and he failed.
Rodgers has achieved much more in a far smaller space of time.
You really think that? I'm surprised. In Europe Rodgers has been an absolute disaster at Celtic, Liverpool and Leicester. Moyes has done well in Europe at Everton, West Ham and with us. He gave us our best run in quite a while when he was here.
Rodgers has also tended to walk into jobs where the bulk of the hard work is done. Martinez at Swansea and Leicester being examples. Liverpool is especially noteworthy, as Dalglish put a really good squad together. He signed Suarez for relative peanuts. When Suarez went, Rodgers spent the money on absolute dross.
Compare with Moyes's record in the transfer market. His wheeling and dealing has been top class. Sunderland was the only poor spot, but the club had lined up the big money signings, leaving him with a pittance. Even here, Fellaini and Mata were useful for years.
I also think what Moyes did at Preston and Everton is easily as good as anything Rodgers has done. He came within a whisker of winning an FA Cup with Everton against Chelsea.
He is also loyal. Turned down Celtic and a lot of other jobs to stay at Everton. Compare that to Rodgers, who claimed to be a lifelong Celtic fan, but then stabbed them in the back in the middle of an historic season to run off to LFC.
Not saying anything about their character, but Moyes literally never stopped complaining after leaving United and even indicated that Sir Alex wouldn’t have achieved with the team he was given. Almost all his decisions there were woeful.
Mata never really fit in at United despite being a useful player and Fellaini wasn’t the profile of signing United needed and he did an absolutely woeful job. Rodgers, at a top club, with fewer resources, came within a whisker of winning the league.
The point about groundwork being done or not does not really have a bearing for me. You have to work with what you are given, and Moyes couldn’t have done any worse in three separate high profile jobs post-Everton. It would have been hard to do any worse at United, in particular.
While I agree with you that Rodgers hasn’t done the business in Europe, I don’t think Moyes European pedigree gets him enough points to negate the difference in quality at their respective top flight jobs.
Rodgers is a better coach than David Moyes. His teams usually play better football, he has won more trophies and, at different points, he has taken all his clubs beyond what would have been expected of them. Moyes has 2 successes and 3 failures in top flight football.
Moyes, like Sir Alex and Jim McLean, is a builder. Fergie would have been sacked had he came in under the current fanbase.
And Gordon Strachan did a far better job than Brendan at Celtic. He qualified from the groups in the Champions League twice, which is the true yardstick for Scottish clubs. Steamrollering the SPL when Rangers were on their knees is not much of a feat. Neil Lennon was able to do the same.
You make the mistake of seeing silverware as the only guide of success in football, but 99% of clubs do not win any. The true measure of skill in a manager is whether he can take a club and make it better. Moyes had more of an impact at PNE, Everton and West Ham than Rodgers has had at any club he has been at.
Rodgers is a good coach, but his tactical approach and flexibility is clearly lacking going by his track record in European competition. He is also not a long-term manager. His longest stint at any club is about three years. That said, it makes him more akin to the modern head coach than the old fashioned British manager.
Moyes has literally transformed WHU from one of the worst teams in the league into one of the best. Did the same at Everton as well.
It’s an interesting point of view, but he received a lot of investment at West Ham and has been able to build a quality squad. He also had the 6th largest salary in the league at Everton, while he finished…about 6th.
I am not saying trophies are the mark of a great manager but Rodgers took those opportunities. He won them and that is where Moyes has always failed to get over the line. Look at his record in big games and playing away at the top teams. He lost his final, whereas Rodgers made that step and won his.
The mark of a good manager is to make a team play beyond the sum of its parts in my view and Rodgers has done that in every job he has been in. Moyes has failed more times than he has succeeded in top division football. Surely you can concede that is a massive mark against him?
I won’t take away what he has done at both Everton and West Ham, but he has had the resources in both jobs. He failed miserably at United. He was desperate at Sunderland and tried to wash his hands of responsibility and he was an object of ridicule at Sociedad.
He will get a mid table team and get them fit and well drilled and get the confidence flowing, but I really don’t see how you can compare him as a coach to Rodger, who for all his flaws, consistently gets his teams playing above themselves.
I don't see how you can say that. Rodgers has bottled qualifying for the Champions League twice in the past two seasons. His results also tend to deteriorate over time. At Celtic the fans were getting restless in the end, as the team was going backwards.
Moyes has not failed more times than he has succeeded. He was at Everton for 11 years. If one managed is at three clubs in the space of time that another holds a job for that long then who is the failure? He was manager of the year three times during that period, which underlines how well he performed.
Moyes left Everton and Preston in very good nick at the end for someone else to take the reins. The three other jobs where he underperformed were short-term forays. Sunderland in particular was a basket case, but it is clear on reflection that our squad had also got well past its sell-by date.
Rodgers left Liverpool in a state, left Celtic in a worse state than he found it and seems to be running out of ideas at Leicester. He still has time to turn it around there, but you give him far too much credit considering he walked into a ready made squad there.
And Moyes had next to no resources at Everton. They were perpetually skint until Moshiri came in. They may have had a decent wage bill, but they were buying no players, and continually had to sell their best players to balance the books.
At West Ham he had a bit to spend this season, but that was due to the fact he had cleared out the bulk of the expensive dross. They sold Haller and Anderson for massive losses. He signed guys like Dawson, Coufal and Soucek on the cheap and made other good value signings like Bowen and Benrahma.
And that is not even mentioning how he has transformed Antonio into one of the best strikers in the league, has helped turn Fornals and Rice into top players and reinvigorated Aaron Cresswell.
Not only that, but 'negative' Moyes has turned West Ham into one of the highest-scoring teams in the league.
I take your points, but you are only seeing one side of the coin. He was dominant with Celtic, to an absurd level. Look where they are now. No one else got as close as he did at Liverpool until Klopp. And he put together a team that played great football. It was more than just Suarez. The buys went awry, but we don’t even know if those came from him with their transfer committee of the time.
He did really well at Swansea and had them playing really good stuff. The squad at Leicester has only improved in his time there and he has held onto their best players. You can’t hold it against him that he hasn’t qualified for the CL with Leicester in a far more competitive top four battle when Moyes only managed it once in 11 years and couldn’t even get them to the group stage when he did!
Man United, Sunderland and Sociedad could have all been long term, but he messed them all up. United was tied up with a pretty bow for him, with all the staff that he would have ever needed, and he messed it up. It’s an obscenely large black mark. He then went and had a large hand (despite what he claimed) in Sunderlanddemise after embarrassing himself on the continent.
It’s the new thing to jump on board what’s going well right now, but 18 good months at West Ham doesn’t make him better than a manager who has been doing consistently well for the last 7-8 years while he caused and contributed to chaos wherever he went.
Everton was a long time ago and this has been his first successful job since then. During that time, Rodgers has won a lot of football matches, many of them in some style. He is on a different level as a coach from David Moyes, for me.
Do appreciate the discussion though mate, without any of the usual aggression that can sometimes come up on here!
Some massive walls of text here very serious business.
very serious business.Some massive walls of text here
Imagine taking 2-3 minutes to write a reply on a topic on a discussion forum!
Man Utd is his big failing. Sociedad was a bit of overseas experience, and he seemed ill-equipped for a different culture. Not least because he was not expected to do anything there but coach the team, which didn't suit his style. You could have had Fergie, Clough and Busby running that Sunderland side and they would have failed. Martin Short pulled the plug after years of massive financial losses.
One interesting, and surprising, stat is Moyes vs. Rodgers head-to-head. I actually thought it would be slightly in Brendan's favour, but he has actually won three, drew two and lost six to Moyes. West Ham absolutely smashed them back in August.
Going by his David Brent-like antics I would hate to be a player under Rodgers. Its interesting to compare the way he keeps tinkering with his Leicester team, while Moyes and his players have a really strong bond at WHU.
All that being said, I guess we'll see how it all pans out from here!
Level on points with United after 8 games with an inferior squad. Clearly not fit to clean Ole’s boots though.