by
Andy Mitten
There were other rumblings that all wasn't well as life after Ferguson began.
Moyes had complained about a fixture list that saw United play Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City in their first five league games. They didn't beat any of a trio that will almost certainly be England’s top three at the end of the season. Not at the start of the season in the league, or when they met second time around (although United did
knock Liverpool out of the Capital One Cup). The club’s record against the top three is: P6 W0 D1 L5 F3 A14.
Numbers don't lie
Currently
United are seventh, a position where they’ve spent most of this season. It’s been a huge disappointment; the club’s worst season campaign since 1988-89, when average crowds dipped below 40,000 and resentment built against the then-manager, Alex Ferguson. It's been a season of sustained disappointments and occasional farce, with pictures of the cracked Manchester United badge commonplace in media reports.
2013-14 will be the first time United have finished outside the top three since 1990-91. The team have suffered their worst home form -- six defeats -- for more than a decade and had a run of three consecutive losses for the first time since 2001.
To compound matters for the 75,000 who fill Old Trafford to capacity for each game, as well as the millions of fans around the globe, the league title looks as though it's going to the home of one of United's biggest rivals: Liverpool or Manchester City.
February of this year was the first time Liverpool were ahead of United at that stage of the season for 23 years.
A year earlier, United had 23 more points after 26 league games than at the same point in 2014. Football didn't begin with the advent of the Premier League in 1992, but United will finish this season with their lowest points tally since then.
Divided they stand?
Back in the summer of 2013, while his players were concerned about the loss not only of Ferguson, but of his coaches who didn't want to leave, Moyes was publicly confident at the start about United’s prospects and talked of his pleasure at working with such great players, as though he'd been handed the keys to a Ferrari after years in family saloon.
Privately, however, he consistently said he had a huge rebuilding job to do. He did it in calls to coaches a year ago as he sought to assemble his future staff, while football was still oblivious to Ferguson’s imminent departure.
He said it to people at Everton, too, and he has said it throughout this season. Moyes is entitled to that view and maybe he’s right, but it’s an odd thing to hear about a team that had just won the league by 11 points.
Moyes’ assessment also did not tally with that of his boss, chief executive Ed Woodward, who said that the squad needed "little re-tooling."
The summer transfer window became a farce and concluded with a deadline day that saw Ander Herrera's agent think his client was going to United, while United refused to pay Athletic Bilbao’s buyout clause. Marouane Fellaini did arrive at the 11th hour. We'll get to him.
Moyes was supported and cut some slack. After a limp Community Shield win --
2-0 versus Wigan -- and a poor league start, fans expected the season to get going in September, then October, November, December, January ... It never did.
Six straight wins around the Christmas period was United’s best run and, as the club were still in four cup competitions at the time, expectations increased slightly.
Yet, by that time, the heavyweight champions had already been knocked down several times. United were 12th after
defeat at home to West Brom on Sept. 28 and, not for the first time, chants of “sacked in the morning” would be heard from the away end.
The mood had begun to shift in the dressing room, too. After the
4-1 derby defeat versus Manchester City, heated words were exchanged among players. Wayne Rooney, United's best player on the day (as he has been for two-thirds of the season), wasn't happy. But then his teammates weren't overjoyed about his conduct during the summer when they fully expected him to leave Old Trafford following his fallout with Ferguson.
Other senior players, who Moyes had gone out of his way to meet before he was appointed, could have been his biggest allies, yet it will be a surprise if any of them are at the club next season.
Ferdinand
let slip a few thoughts about the timing of team announcements that didn't cast Moyes in the best light. Maybe it was about getting used to a new boss.
Meanwhile, his defensive sidekick Nemanja Vidic trained as aggressively as Roy Keane ever did, but cut a different figure to the usually smiling Serb off the pitch. Both had been in far happier dressing rooms. Other players blamed each other and the training.
Robin van Persie might tell his own story of this season in years to come -- Javier Hernandez has
hinted he will -- and he wouldn’t be alone in being underwhelmed by the squad management, with players feeling underused and then overused. In October, he was understood to be unhappy with training while the club were equally unhappy as they thought he was ready to play when he said he wasn't. A compromise was found.
Teachable moments
Moyes wasn’t the only one learning on the job. Woodward had been at Old Trafford for eight years, but he was new to his position as the leading executive.
In September, I interviewed him near United’s Mayfair office for more than two hours. It was days after the 4-1 hammering by City and, as well as getting baffling abuse because of the selection of Ashley Young (unlike at other major clubs, board members at United have no input on team selection), he’d learned not to be caught on television putting his head in his hands.
Woodward agreed that Dortmund coach Juergen Klopp was a “genius,” adding, “Their wage bill is lower than half the clubs in the Premier League, but he’s really got a lot out of them.”
It was an innocent appreciation. Klopp wasn’t on United’s radar because the club had given a six-year contract to Moyes and fully intended to honour it by entrusting him with the type of power Klopp has at Dortmund, yet he doesn’t enjoy the same confidence now.
One problem for Moyes has been his public persona. It’s not working and he should receive help -- just like Sir Alex Ferguson did -- to make him more comfortable and confident in front of the cameras and journalists.
The Mirror's David McDonnell was handed the dubious honour of being Moyes' first banned journalist. His crime was tweeting the United lineup hours before the game. Unlike his predecessor, however, Moyes carried out his banning quite calmly and let the journalist have his say: “So you're banning me for doing my job?” That sort of thing. But Moyes was firm and fair in saying it couldn't carry on.
On too many other occasions, though, Moyes has sent mixed messages, appearing too tense one day and too relaxed another. He doesn't project the image of a United manager, and he has often made comments more befitting of the status of his former club than his current one.
Saying he was “hopeful” of winning a game or describing Liverpool as “favourites” before a game at Old Trafford impressed no one. Nor did saying that he would have accepted a draw at Cardiff before the match, or stating he hoped to "make it difficult" against Newcastle United, or blaming referees, or the squad he was left with (Ferguson didn't appreciate that) and injuries.
After United
lost at Stoke in February, Moyes said, "I don't know what we have to do to win." However well-intentioned it was, it came out badly.
Moyes has to make himself more comfortable, and the messages he sends out must be clearer. There were many unedifying aspects of how Ferguson dealt with the media, but he was effective in using them as a tool to help the football club he managed.
Moyes needs to give better thought to what he’s going to say, pre-empt and push his own agendas. He needs more confidence in his voice. That would come from winning games, which hasn’t happened enough.