An another point I made, is about Moyes being avid student of the game. Where does this come from (I have heard it many times on Caf). I know that he went to France 16 years ago to watch the world cup, and that he goes to a lot of matches, but I would like to know more if his being a student of the game comes from only these two things or there is something that I am missing.
This is from the BBC article about Moyes' successful tenure at Preston:
But he acquired his coaching badges early in his playing career and carefully compiled notes on managers he played for, different coaching techniques; what worked and what did not.
He travelled to France 98, taking an invitation to observe the Scotland squad - again watching and learning.
This image caption really made me chuckle
Moyes is an astute tactical coach
Anyways, Moyes' current defensive approach is probably down to the sudden jump up he made from Preston to Everton along with the fact that he inherited a defensive Everton team from Walter Smith. I think that, given that Moyes had to deal with Smith's squad, he retained that defensive approach whilst adding a set way of playing football when on the attack (unlike Smith, who doesn't appear to deal with that side of the game). He strengthened Everton's defensive solidity whilst improving their attacking side of the game. Of course, once he improved Everton to a mid-table team, he wasn't pushed on by Kenwright to continuously improve.
Since Moyes wasn't pushed on to improve, Moyes kept with this defensive, reactive approach just because it worked for him initially. Of course, he continued on with this whilst failing miserably, here, and I hope he realises that this approach doesn't work here.
What Moyes' managerial career, so far, shows is that Moyes can adapt to different styles but he himself finds it tough to change his ways all the time and prefers to go with the safer approach. When he went to Everton, he made them solid and gave them a plan on the attack. However, he preferred the safe approach over his riskier approach at Preston and, thus, couldn't move on and take the next step. After having laid the foundations of a solid side, a good manager would set up a good, incisive attack. Instead, Moyes kept it safe and didn't improve his team's attack beyond the long-ball-to-the-target-man approach. Of course, he gave his attacking players some degree of freedom in their play, but his defensive approach meant that his attacking players couldn't fully express themselves without worrying about Everton's defensive shape and solidity.
This is the same mistake Martin O'Neill made at Aston Villa where he always played a target man up front and big, strong defenders to make Villa a threat at set pieces whilst they were an attacking threat from their inverted wingers (albeit with more crossing into the box than normal), target man, and box-to-box midfielders. This is one of the reasons why he failed at Sunderland as he didn't have a big target man to rely on and his inability to deal with football that is more modern.
What Moyes needs to do to succeed is to do what he did at Preston and give his attacking players more freedom in their play and show more belief in his players. I think the influence Moyes got from Walter Smith's Everton has caused Moyes to remain defensive over much of his career rather than become more attacking and more progressive in his football. The fact is that it's unlikely that Moyes will ever become proactive, again, even if we've seen some small signs of more proactive football in matches against lower-level opposition.