If Moyes got his way...

Devil81 said:
The moment he removed Sir Alex's backroom staff and replaced them with guys he'd worked with at Preston North End he lost the dressing room.
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Well, he brought people who worked with him at Everton and expected them to make the step up, like he was expected to make the step up from Everton.

Devil81 said:
If he'd have kept the continuity of Sir Alex's staff he'd have faired a lot better than he did.
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I'm struggling to believe the idea Mike Phelan and Rene Meulensteen would have made all that much difference.
 
OrcaFat said:
Moyes inherited a title winning team that was ageing and lacking squad depth. If he got Bale and and a few others that were touted he probably would have gone close to winning the league.y

Some managers excel at getting the best from whatever players they have but the teams that win always have loads of brilliant players.

Moyes was faced with egos that spilled into the vacuum left by SAF but the players were fading stars. Moyes job really was impossible. I doubt if he gave himself the best chance but certainly his prospects would have been improved by getting some good players in to replace the old guard. The same would be true of any manager following SAF.
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Oh for fecks sake. His job wasn't impossible by any means whatsoever. He took over a title winning team, packed with experienced and quality players, the expectations were for him to not make a complete dildo out of himself and qualify for the CL, then build on it, but he ended up being outperformed by the mid table team he left.

His biggest problem was himself. He was faced with a squad of players used to a decisive manager, they quickly snuffed out Moyes for what he was and that was the end of him, didn't stand a chance.

Ancelotti, Mourinho even, would've loved working with that squad of players. Unfortunately we paired the squad with an incompetent fecktard
 
He just wasn't good enough and no matter how much time passes that won't change.

We need to move on.
 
shamans said:
A past it defender bitter towards the last manager who didn't really rate him (and subsequently found his level on the bench at QPR).

Anyway, pointless to speculate. I think the only mad thing was LVG blocking Kroos.
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You mean a defender who had just got into the PL team of the year whilst winning the league?

Supposedly Fergie wouldn't play Rio more than once a week due to his back issues and he was under a personal training programme. Both of these got scrapped by Moyes. Combine this with the fact he was 36 and it's hardly a knock on Rio that he wasn't up to it.
 
Moyes excels at creating an underdog menatlity and it's worked for him with Everton and West Ham. But at Utd at that time, it was never ever going to work. Even now, it would just not work.

He had his chance, just like LVG, Ole and Jose and he fcuked it up. End of story.
 
Moyes was a failure, time to let it go!

He brought the club down to Everton’s mentality
 
UncleBob said:
Oh for fecks sake. His job wasn't impossible by any means whatsoever. He took over a title winning team, packed with experienced and quality players, the expectations were for him to not make a complete dildo out of himself and qualify for the CL, then build on it, but he ended up being outperformed by the mid table team he left.

His biggest problem was himself. He was faced with a squad of players used to a decisive manager, they quickly snuffed out Moyes for what he was and that was the end of him, didn't stand a chance.

Ancelotti, Mourinho even, would've loved working with that squad of players. Unfortunately we paired the squad with an incompetent fecktard
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This gave me a laugh.

My post wasn’t a wind up but I should have expected this kind of reaction.

It’s funny how Moyes did so badly for us when he did ok at Everton and recently at West Ham. He would have done better with a nice fresh batch of quality players, which is what this thread is about.

I’ve read many times on this forum about how withered our squad became, through underinvestment and there being no value in the market. I’m not alone in saying the squad Moyes took over was on a sharp decline. I doubt those titanic managers you mentioned would have done much better in one year.

I don’t rate Moyes and there are much better managers but in my opinion it is mainly about the players. A good manager will quickly assemble a squad of good players if he is backed (quickly means two or three years - see Pep and Klopp for reference), and that’s when the results improve.
 
shamans said:
At that time that was his level not sure whats funny about that. Rio had some shockers in 2013 for us.
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It's funny as you are trying to have a dig at Rio with it just because he didn't rate Moyes.

He was in the 2012/13 team of the year in a title winning team. The shockers (along with most of the rest of the squad) came after Moyes arrived. Probably down to Moyes over playing him and others the first 6 months. With sensible management he could have been much better 13/14.
 
Devil81 said:
The moment he removed Sir Alex's backroom staff and replaced them with guys he'd worked with at Preston North End he lost the dressing room.

If he'd have kept the continuity of Sir Alex's staff he'd have faired a lot better than he did.
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Even more boggling is the fact he had close to no CL experience and replaced all that did. I can't believe I was actually happy with the appointment (Klopp was my first choice)
 
bringbackbebe said:
Moyes inherited a title winning squad and finished 7th the very next season. Enough said.
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That squad was pretty rubbish though. The young players weren't good enough, the key players were too old and the only reason they won a title was because of SAF.

BaneIsPain said:
Still poorly. A player like Rio has zero respect for him.
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I dont think Rio has much clue about what he's talking about. He backed Ole until the end and seems to have helped pushed the Ronaldo deal on the club so I'm skeptical of taking his opinion on Moyes seriously.

Devil81 said:
The moment he removed Sir Alex's backroom staff and replaced them with guys he'd worked with at Preston North End he lost the dressing room.

If he'd have kept the continuity of Sir Alex's staff he'd have faired a lot better than he did.
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New managers should get to appoint their staff. Anything else and we may as well have named him interim manager.
 
Tyrion said:
That squad was pretty rubbish though. The young players weren't good enough, the key players were too old and the only reason they won a title was because of SAF.
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A rubbish squad can't win the league by 11 points mate. Doesn't matter who the manager is.

Tyrion said:
New managers should get to appoint their staff. Anything else and we may as well have named him interim manager.
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That makes sense in 99.9% appointments but this one was almost unique. You had the same ultra successful manages in place for 3 decades and he retires after winning yet another league title. And when a guy who wins everything and has been at the worlds biggest club for 30 years advises you to keep his staff on maybe listen as he might know a thing or two. But that was probably Moyes biggest problem he didn't listen to anyone, ignored Fergie, Rene even Evra says he tried very hard to help him but he wouldn't listen.

When you have that sort of successful set-up in place, sure bring an Assistant from Everton with you but keep the rest in place for at least a year or two to advise you on the club and how it ticks until you get your feet under the table. What were Steve Round and Jimmy fecking Lumsden going to tell Moyes about running Manchester United?

The fact that to this day Moyes still insists that if he had his time at United over again he wouldn't change a thing despite knowing his decisions would inevitably lead to failure, says it all really. Idiotic statement.
 
stevoc said:
A rubbish squad can't win the league by 11 points mate. Doesn't matter who the manager is.
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I don't think a very good squad does as badly as it did under Moyes regardless of who the manager is. There were definitely problems Fergie was covering up.

stevoc said:
That makes sense in 99.9% appointments but this one was almost unique. You had the same ultra successful manages in place for 3 decades and he retires after winning yet another league title. And when a guy who wins everything and has been at the worlds biggest club for 30 years advises you to keep his staff on maybe listen as he might know a thing or two. But that was probably Moyes biggest problem he didn't listen to anyone, ignored Fergie, Rene even Evra says he tried very hard to help him but he wouldn't listen.

When you have that sort of successful set-up in place, sure bring an Assistant from Everton with you but keep the rest in place for at least a year or two to advise you on the club and how it ticks until you get your feet under the table. What were Steve Round and Jimmy fecking Lumsden going to tell Moyes about running Manchester United?

The fact that to this day Moyes still insists that if he had his time at United over again he wouldn't change a thing despite knowing his decisions would inevitably lead to failure, says it all really. Idiotic statement.
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I think if the new manager needs to keep the previous manager's staff to teach him how to do the job, then the whole thing is flawed from the start, which is probably what's the case here.
 
Moyes could have inherited the following players at the start of the season of 2013:
De Gea (22)
Rafeal (22)
Fabio (22)
Phil Jones (21)
Evans (25)
Anderson (25)
Rooney (27)
Smalling (23)
Hernandez (25)
RVP (30)
Nani (26)
Young (28)
Welbeck (22)
Fletcher (29)
Valencia (28)
Kagawa (24)
Zaha (21)
Herrera (24)
Thiago (22)
Januzaj (18)

We wouldn't have a weak midfield if he didn't reject Thiago and Herrera last minute when Fergie/Gill got the deals already.

Giggs, Carrick, Evra, Rio, Vidic aside everyone were in their prime years
 
Still the wrong players. When you make 100 cross into the box, you need side players that are good at crossing, you need a point man to hold the line, and the rest to tap in. Neither Rooney nor RVP could do that, may be Rooney can do the tap in but not #9. Players from Burnley would make the grade.
 
TwoSheds said:
From what you could tell it was Moyes that fecked up both the Herrera and Thiago deals as he "wanted to watch them play himself". As if he'd never fecking seen Thiago play football the cheb!
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I think that’s a bit unfair. He asked to see the scouting reports; apparently the response was “what’s a scouting report?”.

I find him very difficult to like; there’s something rather reptilian about him. I didn’t want him anywhere near the job and rejoiced when he was sacked. I’ve never thought him an idiot though, and he clearly ran a tight ship at Everton. If the person in charge at the time hadn’t been Ed Woodward, they might have picked up on the cues he was given them about the club being a shambles off the field. Don’t forget it was Moyes that suggested bringing John Murtough in.
 
OrcaFat said:
This gave me a laugh.

My post wasn’t a wind up but I should have expected this kind of reaction.

It’s funny how Moyes did so badly for us when he did ok at Everton and recently at West Ham. He would have done better with a nice fresh batch of quality players, which is what this thread is about.

I’ve read many times on this forum about how withered our squad became, through underinvestment and there being no value in the market. I’m not alone in saying the squad Moyes took over was on a sharp decline. I doubt those titanic managers you mentioned would have done much better in one year.

I don’t rate Moyes and there are much better managers but in my opinion it is mainly about the players. A good manager will quickly assemble a squad of good players if he is backed (quickly means two or three years - see Pep and Klopp for reference), and that’s when the results improve.
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:lol:
 
UncleBob said:
Not sure why Herrera is mentioned, but it's hardly unfair in terms of Thiago, Moyes wanting to scout players himself isn't something new.
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So you don’t think he’d have relied on the scouting reports, had they existed?

I’m not defending Moyes; I’ve never been able to stand him. I do think that he exposed some of the United backroom’s inadequacies though.
 
Revaulx said:
So you don’t think he’d have relied on the scouting reports, had they existed?

I’m not defending Moyes; I’ve never been able to stand him. I do think that he exposed some of the United backroom’s inadequacies though.
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We monitored Thiago since his early days at Barcelona and we tried to sign him years before he ended up leaving, Fergie was heavily involved over the years, you really think we didn't have anything but his name and a picture? His (Moyes) approach to signing players isn't anything new, especially personally seeing the player, he hadn't heard of the player and he wasn't comfortable with proceeding with the deal without doing his own process.
 
If we kept Moyes until today, our league positions in the last few years would probably something like this:

4th
5th
4th
3th
6th
5th
3th
5th
7th

No league titles with no cups won (not even FA Cup, Carling Cup or Europa).

Moyes got the ability to assemble a decent squad, but he is pretty bad at challenging for titles

So we wouldn't have been better off anyway.

All posts like this are knee jerk after seeing Moyes got a good season, ignoring the several bad seasons before.
 
Moyes was never going to win anything, he doesn't have the man management skills to win over players who have bigger mentalities than he does. We'd have to replace the whole squad with players like Mark Noble before he started getting something out of them.
 
Tyrion said:
New managers should get to appoint their staff. Anything else and we may as well have named him interim manager.
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That may be the case but he'd have done a damn sight better if he did keep the coaching staff.
 
UncleBob said:
Not sure why Herrera is mentioned, but it's hardly unfair in terms of Thiago, Moyes wanting to scout players himself isn't something new.
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Herrera is mentioned because we missed out on signing him due to dithering. We then signed him a year later once the spanner had left.
 
UncleBob said:
We monitored Thiago since his early days at Barcelona and we tried to sign him years before he ended up leaving, Fergie was heavily involved over the years, you really think we didn't have anything but his name and a picture? His (Moyes) approach to signing players isn't anything new, especially personally seeing the player, he hadn't heard of the player and he wasn't comfortable with proceeding with the deal without doing his own process.
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Yes I vaguely remember we were interested in Thiago under Fergie.

Still it’s a major indictment of the whole post-Fergie “transition” that people assumed that Moyes would just pick up from where he left. I’m sure you’re right about Moyes’ approach to signings; it would have been helpful if United had been aware of it.
 
Tyrion said:
I don't think a very good squad does as badly as it did under Moyes regardless of who the manager is. There were definitely problems Fergie was covering up.
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I'd say there's probably a middle ground between very good and pretty rubbish don't you think?

It was a good squad with tons of experience. It needed some new blood as SAF let a few too many players get too old but then he probably had an idea he wouldn't manage forever. But to say it was rubbish is well, rubbish.


Tyrion said:
I think if the new manager needs to keep the previous manager's staff to teach him how to do the job, then the whole thing is flawed from the start, which is probably what's the case here.
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Well maybe as SAF had a pretty unique role where he was manager and DOF rolled into one and ran the football side of the club. His responsibilities built up over the years/decades and as a result United didn't have the most modern set-up. Moyes was hired to plug into that and basically grow into the role. Which is obviously why everyone who had an idea of the scale of the job advised him to keep the current staff in place.

Even going from a smaller club to one of the biggest in the world is a steep learning curve for any coach I'd imagine. But with stepping into the shoes of the greatest of all time Moyes should have been more open to advice instead of assuming he knew best. As a result he was out of his depth pretty quickly and the players picked up on that.
 
Revaulx said:
I think that’s a bit unfair. He asked to see the scouting reports; apparently the response was “what’s a scouting report?”.

I find him very difficult to like; there’s something rather reptilian about him. I didn’t want him anywhere near the job and rejoiced when he was sacked. I’ve never thought him an idiot though, and he clearly ran a tight ship at Everton. If the person in charge at the time hadn’t been Ed Woodward, they might have picked up on the cues he was given them about the club being a shambles off the field. Don’t forget it was Moyes that suggested bringing John Murtough in.
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So United didn't have scouts circa 2013?
 
Devil81 said:
The moment he removed Sir Alex's backroom staff and replaced them with guys he'd worked with at Preston North End he lost the dressing room.

If he'd have kept the continuity of Sir Alex's staff he'd have faired a lot better than he did.
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No. Doesn't work like that anywhere. What Moyes did was fair and right but neither he nor his staff were good enough for us.
 
redIndianDevil said:
No. Doesn't work like that anywhere. What Moyes did was fair and right but neither he nor his staff were good enough for us.
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It actually works like that almost everywhere. Only the wealthiest clubs do it differently and even then it's not necessarily the case.
 
JPRouve said:
It actually works like that almost everywhere. Only the wealthiest clubs do it differently and even then it's not necessarily the case.
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Nope any coach worth his salt takes their staff with them wherever they go. It happens at every club, sure one or two chose or are chosen to stay on but most of them leave.
 
The biggest difference between a great football manager and a no-hoper is when they say things like "we are going to try our best to get a result", which usually means they're aiming to get a draw or not get absolutely battered. Moyesy used it quite a few times while he was at Everton, and he said the same thing in the last half of the season with us too.

We MIGHT have gotten top four a few times with him, but we got top four quite a few times -without him-. We would never, ever have won the league with David Moyes as manager, and it wouldn't have mattered if he had a Messi-Ronaldo-Neymar front three he would still have failed.
 
Moyes was out of his depth could have another few years and had little to show for it from the POV of a club like United. He's at his level now like he was at Everton a club were a decent cup run, reasonable league performance and qualification for Europe are deemed as a succesful season
 
It was a near impossible job to take over from SAF. The entire club revolved around the man, nobody was just going to walk into that vacuum (compounded by Gill) and pick up where he left off.

And let’s not forget that his was a squad in decline. League winners maybe, but it was a flattering result that wasn’t going to be repeated.

There was a lot of talk about the shadow of Busby causing problems after the great man stepped down, so I can see why Moyes brought in his own team. It was clearly the wrong move in hindsight though and probably turned many veterans in the squad against him from day one.
 
redIndianDevil said:
Nope any coach worth his salt takes their staff with them wherever they go. It happens at every club, sure one or two chose or are chosen to stay on but most of them leave.
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Most managers do not have a staff, they have one or two people. And most clubs can't afford and won't sack/compensate entire staffs.
 
redIndianDevil said:
Nope any coach worth his salt takes their staff with them wherever they go. It happens at every club, sure one or two chose or are chosen to stay on but most of them leave.
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Maybe our coaching staff was smaller at the time compared to other clubs, I don't know.

At the end of the day, we're talking about only three people who left - one of whom a goalkeeping coach who was never going to have much of an influence. So it comes down to Phelan and Meulensteen, who I think was actually offered to stay but declined.
 
stevoc said:
So United didn't have scouts circa 2013?
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This is a question for @Adnan really. As far as I’m aware, there wasn’t much by way of a structured, data driven system as was being developed at other clubs.

Bear in mind that SAF knew everyone who was anyone in world football, and was well liked by the vast majority. His personal contact network coupled with his excellent judgement of people’s character was sufficient for him. All that disappeared overnight when he retired.
 
Revaulx said:
This is a question for @Adnan really. As far as I’m aware, there wasn’t much by way of a structured, data driven system as was being developed at other clubs.

Bear in mind that SAF knew everyone who was anyone in world football, and was well liked by the vast majority. His personal contact network coupled with his excellent judgement of people’s character was sufficient for him. All that disappeared overnight when he retired.
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We had a scouting network though whether or not Moyes replaced some of them I don't know. But if we had scouts obviously they were going to scout players and then reporting back.
 
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