The squad does have problem, that's why it was never going to win the league or the Champions League this season. However it's not so poor that it would only be good enough to finish mid-table, that's what the problem is. People expected regression, just not this much.
Moyes So Far!
- Thread starter RedTillI'mDead
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The squad does have problem, that's why it was never going to win the league or the Champions League this season. However it's not so poor that it would only be good enough to finish mid-table, that's what the problem is. People expected regression, just not this much.
That's OK, there won't be another winning run until we get a comfortable run like we just had.
Oh, I agree with all that. But Fergie could and should have managed the squad better. He should have left a better team for his successor who was going to find it difficult to follow him anyway.
The fact that Vidic, Ferdinand and Evra seemingly approach the end of their United careers at the time when we're desperately short in midfield just adds an extra layer of difficulty to the rebuilding and Fergie is partly responsible for that. So is Moyes for not signing a proper quality midfielder in the summer.
With that kind of sarky argument you can fall into the bandwagon that we can still win the league.
It's January and I can't see us finishing in the top 4, finishing below 5th is as good as mid table. That's a pretty bad state of affairs even with a midfield issue. Clearly there is something wrong in the system we have in place.
I'm not blaming Sir Alex really, after all this squad was more then enough for him to walk the title and win 5 of the last 7. The thing is, we could have been more dominant IMO if we signed somebody like Vidal before he went to Juve, to have him next to Carrick. We could have actually been playing well these last few years, even if result wise things wouldn't be hugely different, at least not in the league.
It is Moyes' fault this year though. He had the money, he chose not to spend it on a good player, and instead threw away 30m on a player most people on here predicted would be shite for us and wouldn't fit in at all. What a surprise that we were right as well...
6 years? Even worse. If it was a 2 year contract like what I'm assuming most new managers get, he'd have been sacked by now, easily. As it is though, we're more then likely stuck with him because it cost quite a bit to sack him probably, just because we wanted to make a statement with his appointment basically. Working out really well so far, that statement is.
We're 5 points from 4th. Anything could happen. I'll act like it has happened when it has happened, not in January.
What team should that have been? With Messi, Xavi and Iniesta?
Yes Vidic and Ferdinand approach the end of their careers but in CB position we have Smalling, Evans, and Jones, who are more mature, more experienced and I can't possibly think of better set of CB in the league. Add to that De Gea, Rooney, RvP who are probably the best in their positions as well.
The team Fergie left behind was good enough to battle for the championship this year not for a place in Intertoto cup.
As for Evra - Fergie eyed Fabio as his replacement and this season he has played the grand total of 1 game.
As for midfield as I said, it is certainly better with retirement due and with the new manager with new vision/tactics that he himself should splash the cash for quality midfielder, rather than Fergie buying one last summer for 40-50m and leaving Moyes this year with no cash for signings.
I'm afraid that after 1/2 a season I've been extremely disappointed with Moyes. The most most worrying is that I think there seems to a complete lack of vision footballing wise and the rumours about the (over) training.
Well you can keep your head in the sand if you want and keep out of the thread till it happens. And I suppose the discussion is hypothetical anyway as most have said the main expectation of Moyes this season should be to finish top 4.
We can't seem to beat any team in the top 8 with many difficult trips ahead. Unless we have drastic changes, we're on the road to finish out of the top 4 in any case.
Yeah, we still have to go away to Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Newcastle and Southampton, while we have City and Liverpool at home. I honestly can't see us improving our record against the top 9 teams too much, considering we dropped points against all of those teams apart from Arsenal, and I doubt we'll do the double against them.
Although I don't get quite as down as all the ranters after each defeat, still think that 6 year contract was sheer madness.
Just cannot see the logic.
If he does really well, where's he going to go? Real Madrid? Barcelona? unlikely.
If he does averagely/badly, then you're saddled with a huge pay off.
It was a bizarre statement type length.
3-4 years would have done that.
We all laughed at that Pardew 7 year contract after all!
Just cannot see the logic.
If he does really well, where's he going to go? Real Madrid? Barcelona? unlikely.
If he does averagely/badly, then you're saddled with a huge pay off.
It was a bizarre statement type length.
3-4 years would have done that.
We all laughed at that Pardew 7 year contract after all!
Oh, bullshit. The number of people on here saying we should be challenging for the top of the table on here is staggering considering the change and problems with the team. Pure delusion.
Well to be fair, hardly we could be more dominant last year winning the title by 11 points and 89 in total.
If anything questions should be raised for our cup form.
As for Vidal it is in hindsight as Vidal was not the same player he's now. His development is tremendous over the last 2 years.
As for the rest I completely agree.
6 years contract for a manager who won zip so far...
It was to stop people for calling for his head and to accept he'll be here a while. Because this was all inevitable. SAF knows this squad more than anyone.
To be fair, if anyone is happy with what he's done so far, they must have been expecting us to be battling for relegation and get knocked out of everything right away or something.
I'm not sure it is. I think many of us that don't share it are currently despairing too much at the ceaseless doom and gloom posts to wish to contribute to the debate.
I think our football has improved recently, against Spurs in particular there were a lot of positive things.
Given that a majority on here didn't want him in the first place, the calamitous first six months only reinforce the concerns that he was too much of a lightweight for the job.
Thats the thing.....There has been literally no positives with the exception of the Rooney situation.
We can give him credit for playing Januzaj but, a talent like that would have gotten into the first team squad anyways.
Personally, I didn't expect to win anything this year. But I damn sure didn't expect this.
Again, I'm not sure if that was really a majority of posters or just a majority of posts.
We was... Was a great watch for 15mins. Then I woke up and realised we still were creating f'all in the final third.
Absolutely.
Agree, I meant more it would have helped actual performance wise and dominate teams more, even if the results probably would not have been too different. As for Vidal, there were plenty on here calling for him, but I mention him as just one example, because there have been plenty of class midfielders that moved around over the last 6-7 years, ever since we've been in dire need of a midfielder, and they all would have helped.
So we gave him a 6 year contract so fans wouldn't put pressure on him? You do realize that makes him seem like an enormous fanny who can't take the slightest bit of criticism? This definitely wasn't inevitable. If we signed a good midfielder for instance, a lot of this could have been avoided. Of course it was always going to be a tough season and one of transition, but Moyes has made a mess of it so far in the league. Like others have said, no manager is worth 30 points over the course of an entire season, not even Sir Alex, and we are on course to reach 68 points, 31 points behind last seasons total.
We had a number of chances cleared pretty much off the line and sustained good periods of pressure. We passed the ball much more quickly than we have done all season. Defensively we looked a bit soft whenever Spurs broke at us. It was an odd result because we played better than Spurs, we certainly didn't deserve to lose!
If you look back at threads like Sir Alex has retired (or whatever its called) and who do you want to replace Sir Alex, the vast majority said stuff like not moyes, anybody but moyes, please not Moyes, or just said other people and had Moyes at the bottom of their lists. Then whenever we'd play them it'd be stuff like "there is no chance he'll ever take over after Sir Alex". Pretty much nobody wanted Moyes in, apart from maybe 2 or 3 people who think he'd be decent for us, but still wasn't first choice.
Was this after Fergie retiring or before?
I remember the stuff in the SAF threads. What I'm doubting is whether those who didn't have a problem with Moyes felt the need to state that as many times as those that did.
That's a good point, but I still can't help but feel that the vast majority of United fans would have preferred somebody else. Even those who were fine with him, he was probably like 4th or 5th choice for managers to replace Sir Alex. I doubt that there were more then a handful who thought Moyes was the right appointment and would bring us success. He might yet, but he's shown nothing in his past to make people think he will.
before
What's the difference?
It was/is a huge gamble. Moyes doesn't have the background and the winning mentality. At the moment those fears/posts doesn't seem way off.
Same can be said regarding Fellaini. What could we expect? To fix our CM problem?
Some people can say that he inherited a weak squad, and no doubt there were weaknesses in it, but for me he has still failed to utilize the team he had anywhere near as best he could. We're below a team that already sacked their manager over results. We have issues but they're not this bad imo.
The midfield is not a top midfield we know that but for me he's not helped the situation. Far too often he seems comfortable allowing the likes of Clev to roam and it completely leaves us open. We already play 2 players wide, using fullbacks pushing up and wingers generally staying wide, why does Clev then still need to go wide so often? The warning signs were there right from the start with Spurs, any time they picked up the ball in a decent position they were able to cut right through us becuase we had both full backs up the pitch and one of our two central midfielders pretty high as well, leaving our 3 slowest players to cover far too much ground.
That's happened before in other games, some we've paid the price others we've scraped through. Now under Fergie things weren't much different, but he was able to get more out of certain players to mean we could live dangerously and he had another trump card being RVP in top form. That was always a get out of jail card, getting us back in to games in precarious positions but also giving us a lead when we might not have been the best team. I mean for me the likes of Valencia, Young were worst last season than they are this season, Moyes has them playing better, but they don't compensate for the loss of RVP who scored goals out of nothing and I don't think Moyes has accepted that. Fergie could get away with Valencia doing nothing but putting in a decent shift and keeping the pitch wide last season because he had RVP, Moyes hasn't had that but he hasn't tried to change things and we keep seeing against any team that puts up a fight how wasteful Valencia is, and worst of all he sucks other team members to him because he constantly needs their help as he won't have a go at people properly.
Moyes has been unlucky with injuries and personally I could easily have seen us dropping some of these points under Fergie with both Carrick and RVP missing and the poor form of certain players a month ago or so. But as I said I think Moyes has significantly under performed with what he had. Not being able to get the absolute maximum out of some players as Fergie did is fine, that will come as he gets to know them and gets more experience, but not adapting his tactics to make up for it is an issue.
I still think he can turn it around but he's giving himself a lot to do and he needs to get this window right. If he doesn't fancy Fabio at all then he has to get a full back. Evra looks shattered and Buttner isn't good enough. I think Fabio has shown since he got here that he can put in a shift, it might not be top class but it will be better than Buttner and in general shouldn't cause too many issues. But he doesn't like him for whatever reason so then he needs to do something about it because Evra being over used is causing issues.
He's stuck on the midfield, I don't think he can sign someone who's not really top class as it will throw more questions marks over Fellaini but it will be a risk not to do anything.
Will be interesting to see what he does in the cups now. I think we need to use the away leg to Sunderland to rest some players to avoid burn out, we have some important league games where he needs to get results now, but he will definitely want at least one of the cups.
The midfield is not a top midfield we know that but for me he's not helped the situation. Far too often he seems comfortable allowing the likes of Clev to roam and it completely leaves us open. We already play 2 players wide, using fullbacks pushing up and wingers generally staying wide, why does Clev then still need to go wide so often? The warning signs were there right from the start with Spurs, any time they picked up the ball in a decent position they were able to cut right through us becuase we had both full backs up the pitch and one of our two central midfielders pretty high as well, leaving our 3 slowest players to cover far too much ground.
That's happened before in other games, some we've paid the price others we've scraped through. Now under Fergie things weren't much different, but he was able to get more out of certain players to mean we could live dangerously and he had another trump card being RVP in top form. That was always a get out of jail card, getting us back in to games in precarious positions but also giving us a lead when we might not have been the best team. I mean for me the likes of Valencia, Young were worst last season than they are this season, Moyes has them playing better, but they don't compensate for the loss of RVP who scored goals out of nothing and I don't think Moyes has accepted that. Fergie could get away with Valencia doing nothing but putting in a decent shift and keeping the pitch wide last season because he had RVP, Moyes hasn't had that but he hasn't tried to change things and we keep seeing against any team that puts up a fight how wasteful Valencia is, and worst of all he sucks other team members to him because he constantly needs their help as he won't have a go at people properly.
Moyes has been unlucky with injuries and personally I could easily have seen us dropping some of these points under Fergie with both Carrick and RVP missing and the poor form of certain players a month ago or so. But as I said I think Moyes has significantly under performed with what he had. Not being able to get the absolute maximum out of some players as Fergie did is fine, that will come as he gets to know them and gets more experience, but not adapting his tactics to make up for it is an issue.
I still think he can turn it around but he's giving himself a lot to do and he needs to get this window right. If he doesn't fancy Fabio at all then he has to get a full back. Evra looks shattered and Buttner isn't good enough. I think Fabio has shown since he got here that he can put in a shift, it might not be top class but it will be better than Buttner and in general shouldn't cause too many issues. But he doesn't like him for whatever reason so then he needs to do something about it because Evra being over used is causing issues.
He's stuck on the midfield, I don't think he can sign someone who's not really top class as it will throw more questions marks over Fellaini but it will be a risk not to do anything.
Will be interesting to see what he does in the cups now. I think we need to use the away leg to Sunderland to rest some players to avoid burn out, we have some important league games where he needs to get results now, but he will definitely want at least one of the cups.
I doubt there was a majority in favour of any manager, at that stage. At the point we became aware that we needed a new manager for this season, he would've gotten a lot more votes, I'm sure.
The debate then largely seemed to be whether it should be Moyes or Mourinho and the latter had plenty of criticism directed at him too, despite how unlikely it looked that he was being considered.
Six in a row against crap teams. Beating the lower half of the table isn't an achievement; it's to be expected at Manchester United. His results against good teams:
.625 points per game against the top 8. We've also played the most games of those teams and have the fewest points. This doesn't account for how awful we have been at home.
It's not as though this couldn't have been predicted from his Everton results when he never beat Liverpool.
Yet the other 'bigger teams' slip up against lower opposition, there are no awards for being top of that table you posted and even under SAF we always slipped up against big teams. What matters is the table at the end of the season and lets judge Moyes on that.
I'm not debating the merits of Moyes, himself. I'm debating Redcafe's historic views on him.
You do realize it's the club that made the choice to give him the contract for that reason?
This was always inevitable. This is a profoundly unique situation. There were always going to be massive internal emotional and political problems with the change. Anyone who doesn't understand that doesn't have the least bit of understanding of psychology.
And the team wasn't going to splash the amount that was needed to get a player like Herrera. They just didn't. We are and were always going to have to pay more to get a natural CM. We just haven't wanted to pay that amount for 4 years. Go figure.
The thing I find hard to believe is that with what is surely an extensive scouting network we can't identify one midfielder at a smaller club in world football who could have come in and made an impact. There must be another Modric/Gundogen etc out there waiting to be found, if we won't stump up the cash. I mean maybe we did have some targets and they've gone out of the window because Moyes wants his own scouted players but I'd image if they were good enough for Fergie then that's enough for Moyes. But either way we must have some targets in place that Moyes could have had a look at to see if he agree's. If they're not willing to splash the cash on an established player than they need to accept the risk on a lesser know player.
Maybe jan isn't the time to look but I find it hard to believe over the last couple of years that we couldn't find one midifelder who was attainable.
Am I alone in thinking it very unlikely that the owners of our club would give any manager a six year contract that doesn't contain clauses they can use to terminate it without having to pay full compensation?
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