The Moyes bashing gets beyond the pale at times. I like Allardyce, and hope West Ham pay a price for their treatment of him. However, the United squad left behind by Ferguson was going to be no easy task for even the likes of Mourinho, Klopp or Pep to retain a premiership title, much less Moyes or Allardyce. I'm increasingly of the opinion that only Fergie would've kept us competitive, and even then, I have a few doubts.
Was Moyes really our first choice to replace Ferguson?
- Thread starter Dominos
- Start date
This is the 200 Million Moyes would have spent on...possibly the worst spent 200 million in football history? No disrespect to the man but could he have crumbled an empire single handedly through not having a single iota what he was doing?
-------------------------Howard---------------------
Clyne-------Hummels----Dragovic---------Shaw----
Nani-------Carvalho-----Fellaini--------Konoplyanka
--------------------Rooney----------------------------
--------------------Cavani-----------------------------
-------------------------Howard---------------------
Clyne-------Hummels----Dragovic---------Shaw----
Nani-------Carvalho-----Fellaini--------Konoplyanka
--------------------Rooney----------------------------
--------------------Cavani-----------------------------
I never wanted Moyes appointed as United manager and thought the club absolutely made the right decision in sacking him when they did, but this seems a ludicrously unfair criticism to aim at him. There's no way to know who he would or would not have signed (although there's good reason to think that this wouldn't have been his choice XI), and at any rate, Van Gaal has spent c. £150m thus far on a group of players who haven't done appreciably better than this particular list might have done. Van Gaal is obviously a superior manager to Moyes, and there are plenty of sticks to use to beat Moyes over the head with without having to resort to ridiculous hypothetical transfer target XI's.
Moyes was no doubt a clown, but are selling dreams right now if you think he would have bought Howard. Also this summer we ourselves have thrown £150million down the drain, £60million was for Di Maria a guy who has done feck all for us. So you can't really use that as a stick to beat Moyes with. Also we need a striker badly, Cavani would have likely been a better buy than Di Maria tbh, and we would have more points with the goals he could have bought.
In terms of that 11, Hummels, Dragovic and Carvalho are all players we can do with right now, we was also heavily linked with Kroos before Moyes was sacked, apparantly he wanted to play Carvalho and Kroos together which means our midfield under Moyes would look better than it does now.
Wow, there're even people claiming to predict how Moyes would waste 200 million pounds and it's all Moyes' fault. lol.
Well, at least not everyone is blindly bashing.
Seriously, let him have his peace already, guys.
There's no point blindly bashing a man who tried his best and failed. How would any of you feel if you took on a new job, flunked the job badly and they post a video of your failures on youtube and the whole world laughs and mocks you for the rest of your life? Failure is an event. Not a person. Moyes may have failed, but he tried his best despite all the shit that was going on around him. We can't fault him for that. Heck, the whole world knew he was going to be sacked before he himself was informed. That's how shitty everything was at the time. Have some pity, guys.
Well, at least not everyone is blindly bashing.
Seriously, let him have his peace already, guys.
There's no point blindly bashing a man who tried his best and failed. How would any of you feel if you took on a new job, flunked the job badly and they post a video of your failures on youtube and the whole world laughs and mocks you for the rest of your life? Failure is an event. Not a person. Moyes may have failed, but he tried his best despite all the shit that was going on around him. We can't fault him for that. Heck, the whole world knew he was going to be sacked before he himself was informed. That's how shitty everything was at the time. Have some pity, guys.
Back to the OP's post, I'm inclined to agree that Mourinho was heavily being courted by Chelsea by the time Sir Alex told him privately of his upcomming retirement, similarly with Pep who was already speaking/agreed with Bayern.
But then Sir Alex always rated Moyes highly, he'd always drop his name when it came to the best managers in the PL over the years, then theres the staggeringly obvious fact moved so fast post announcement, and gave him a 6 year contract, it was obviously somethinhg we'd prepared several months for in advance.
Speculation, but I'm also of the opinion if it wasnt for the Aguerooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo goal Sir Alex may have retired that summer, but felt he couldn't walk away from his dynasty on such a low moment, and held off retirement one more season, if that had any inkling of truth to it, then all of those managers could have been available and considered when we were planning long in advance.
But then Sir Alex always rated Moyes highly, he'd always drop his name when it came to the best managers in the PL over the years, then theres the staggeringly obvious fact moved so fast post announcement, and gave him a 6 year contract, it was obviously somethinhg we'd prepared several months for in advance.
Speculation, but I'm also of the opinion if it wasnt for the Aguerooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo goal Sir Alex may have retired that summer, but felt he couldn't walk away from his dynasty on such a low moment, and held off retirement one more season, if that had any inkling of truth to it, then all of those managers could have been available and considered when we were planning long in advance.
I'm pretty sure Sir Alex said so himself in his book. But I don't see a reason not to believe him when he says the decision to retire was take half way during the season. And options were still there in December 2012.
Im not so sure Moyes would have lasted getting top 4.
Your basing everything on the assumption that everything said in public was the utmost truth. United on the inside might very well have wanted many others before Moyes, and may have seen Moyes as a buffer until a big name became available. They aren't going to let that be known though are they, United aren't a club to come out and say this is our interim manager, we have no confidence in him long term but until we get our guy he'll do. No, they come out and say we believe in this guy, then if by some minor miracle he goes and wins the league, or remoulds the team into something that has a future, bonus, if not, get a proper manager. As it was, he was crap in all areas.
If Moyes had got top 4 last year he might have stayed, but personally I don't think he definitely would have, im not sure top 4 would have been enough necessarily as his management in general was piss poor. The team looked shoddy, unenthused, tactically inept and like it was going nowhere. He had no ideas and was being tactically outdone at every turn. No chance can I see United looking at his first year, even with top four and thinking "yes, this is the guy were going to give 2-400million to over the next few years to rebuilt this team. Instead id be thinking, "thank feck he managed to keep top four, now lets get a proper manager in to do the rebuilding".
As for the stuff on Fergie, sounds like nonsense to me. Fergie spent 2 years before he retired openly meeting with some of the best managers in the world who coincidentally would potentially be available. And unless you have access to Fergie's diary, there no way you can say for sure that Moyes was Fergie's first choice. Much more likely was he met with Mourinho/Pep etc over his last few years sounding them out. When it came to it the main targets were not available and so Moyes was brought in as a solid place-holder with potential to be better.
Everyone still remember this? 
Season didn't turn out too well for "dem Moyes boys", did it?
Season didn't turn out too well for "dem Moyes boys", did it?
Here is my awesome conspiracy theory.
Fergie knew that the club was in decline and that he had milked a miracle from a dried up teet. In Moyes he saw a convenient transition. Even if he didn't recognize the decline of many of our key and influential players for the last ~decade, putting up a straw man in Moyes is the ultimate in pragmatism. The idea being that no matter what a transition to a new manager is going to be extremely difficult, made even more so by Fergie milking aforementioned miracle from nothing. Expectation then is that the team is going to struggle the following season, let's just assume we had gotten LVG last year, and he takes that squad and struggles to 4th, or even 5th and we miss the Champions League. Compare that with Moyes taking us to 7th and getting the sack and then LVG coming in this year and taking us to 4th. LVG is seen more as a savior rescuing the club from Moyes, even if LVG would have struggled to make top 4 himself last season.
Basically, is Fergie an evil genius making the best out of a terrible situation? Is he like a wolverine, caught in a trap he'd rather chew his leg off and live another day, than end up as someones hat?!
Fergie knew that the club was in decline and that he had milked a miracle from a dried up teet. In Moyes he saw a convenient transition. Even if he didn't recognize the decline of many of our key and influential players for the last ~decade, putting up a straw man in Moyes is the ultimate in pragmatism. The idea being that no matter what a transition to a new manager is going to be extremely difficult, made even more so by Fergie milking aforementioned miracle from nothing. Expectation then is that the team is going to struggle the following season, let's just assume we had gotten LVG last year, and he takes that squad and struggles to 4th, or even 5th and we miss the Champions League. Compare that with Moyes taking us to 7th and getting the sack and then LVG coming in this year and taking us to 4th. LVG is seen more as a savior rescuing the club from Moyes, even if LVG would have struggled to make top 4 himself last season.
Basically, is Fergie an evil genius making the best out of a terrible situation? Is he like a wolverine, caught in a trap he'd rather chew his leg off and live another day, than end up as someones hat?!
We'd not been linked with Dragovic when Moyes was here.