The Glazer family’s support for David Moyes will face a severe examination if Manchester United suffer more embarrassment at Old Trafford over a critical next week.
As United denied suggestions that Ryan Giggs had been involved in a dressing-room bust-up with Moyes after the dire 3-0 defeat at home to Liverpool on Sunday — a game watched by the club’s leading sponsors and Avram Glazer — there are growing concerns that further setbacks in their next two matches at Old Trafford could prove a tipping point for supporters.
United fans reacted defiantly on Sunday, but while there was a desire to put on a show of unity in front of fierce rivals, elimination from the Champions League by Olympiacos tomorrow and defeat by Manchester City a week today may be too much for some to stomach. Sandwiched between those games, the Barclays Premier League champions travel to Upton Park to play West Ham United on Saturday.
The limp surrender to Liverpool was described as “awful” by senior figures at United yesterday, but while the official line was that the board’s backing for Moyes had not changed, the manager’s position has weakened considerably in the wake of a wretched run of seven defeats in the past 14 matches.
No “extraordinary discussions” over Moyes’s future have taken place between the Glazers and Ed Woodward, the United executive vice-chairman, who are in daily contact, but there is shock at the extent of the team’s collapse since the turn of the year.
With United trailing 2-0 from the first leg of their Champions League round-of-16 tie against Olympiacos in Athens, there is a distinct prospect of the club’s pursuit of silverware being over with two months of the season left.
A bad run of results aside, there is also particular consternation at the one-dimensional nature of so much of United’s play this term and a belief that Moyes would benefit from having a stronger backroom team around him.
Doubts among the squad about Moyes’s suitability to the job have been growing for some time, although reports by Red Issue, the United fanzine, yesterday that Giggs, the player-coach, had torn into Moyes and the other coaching staff after the Liverpool debacle were dismissed by the club. United have also moved to refute suggestions that Giggs has an issue with Moyes’s training methods and refused to attend one coaches’ meeting because he felt the manager “doesn’t listen”. Moyes came in for more criticism on Sunday night when Kevin Sheedy, the former Everton striker who coaches the club’s under-18s and previously worked with Moyes at Goodison Park, claimed on Twitter that the Scot was “never interested in our youth team or players”. Everton ordered Sheedy to remove the tweet.
Sheedy also lambasted Moyes’s tactics. “Punt the ball up to [Marouane] Fellaini: great viewing” and added: “We [Everton] now have a manager who wants to win games.”
United’s annual partner conference on Saturday had been attended by all the club’s principal sponsors, unfortunate timing given that executives attended the Liverpool game the next day.
Juan Mata, the United playmaker, claimed fans deserved far better than to watch their team humiliated by their Merseyside rivals. Writing in his blog, Mata said: “It makes me mad not being able to give you what you deserve.”
