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Young £

By Young £
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Mame Biram Diouf
Mame Biram Diouf

LAHI BE LIKE                                                                                          

BSOM
BSOM

'Look uncle, plenty space to sell dvds' haha

Flojo
Flojo
Agony Newbie

Agony

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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."

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.

http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/espnfcunited/id/13814?cc=5739
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Kompressor Newbie

Kompressor

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Can't see United going foreign.Maybe Giggs will be full time manager?

This won't go Foreign thing is all well and good till you look at the alternative.

Hopefully if a change is made it'll be based on logic and sound reason as opposed to "ohh I like that boy Moyes, didn't like him enough to accept him as my assistant manager but like him all the same, give him a go"

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Mame Biram Diouf Newbie

Mame Biram Diouf

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Former Manchester United defender David May has been suspended from his punditry duties on the club's MUTV channel for saying David Moyes is "out of his depth", according to the Daily Mail.

May's comments were made on MUTV's post-match coverage of United's 2-0 defeat to Everton - a result which appears to have cost Moyes his job.

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The King Newbie

The King

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In Frank O'Farrell's day, he started getting suspicious when he turned up for Bobby Charlton's testimonial dinner and discovered that he was not even seated on the top table for a function he had organised himself. It was the next day O'Farrell was summoned to Manchester United's boardroom to be sacked and "A Nice Day for an Execution", the relevant chapter of his autobiography, remembers how Matt Busby avoided eye contact as the chairman, Louis Edwards, broke the news. "It wasn't so much I got the sack but the way they behaved as people," O'Farrell wrote. "I can never forgive them for that – they were nasty beggars."

Wilf McGuinness ended up taking solace in a bottle of sherry when it was his turn. "It was as if the world had ended," he recalled many years later. "I was demoralised, heartbroken, horribly hurt. I'm not ashamed to admit that, in those darkest moments of my career, I literally banged my head against the wall, several times." Jack Crompton, the trainer, eventually found him, in a crumpled heap on the boardroom floor.

The break is rarely clean and for David Moyes nobody should make the mistake of thinking the payoff will prevent it being the most harrowing moment of his professional life. Moyes was the wrong man for the job; he just did not realise it. He will find future work, maybe even success, but his reputation will never fully recover. He will always be remembered as the man who took over from Ferguson and blew it. The modern-day McGuinness-O'Farrell, replacing a legend and, ultimately, falling so far short he will have to carry the consequences like a rucksack of bricks.

Plainly, it has been a difficult decision for United when it means abandoning everything they have always preached and going against Sir Alex Ferguson, the man who handpicked Moyes for the job and decreed that his successor, and friend, should get a six-year contract. The mind goes back to the opening night of Ferguson's book tour, on an October evening at the Lowry theatre, and what he told his audience about the management profession. "It's a terrible industry. When clubs sack a manager there is no evidence it works. But there is evidence, and it's hard evidence, that sticking with your manager does work. This is an important issue and it is something I believe in, very strongly. Sacking a manager does not help."

But what if the manager is simply not up to it? Firing Moyes would not be an impetuous or shocking decision, and Ferguson will just have to live with that. Even taking into account United's determination to go by their own rules, and their distaste for football's sacking culture, it has become abundantly clear Moyes is out of his comfort zone, drowning under the weight of his work. "The Chosen One" the banner read. But Moyes was not the right choice and that is the awkward truth for Ferguson. It was a serious lapse of judgment that might have put United back years.

The slump – for that is what it is – has been too extreme for a club of United's ambitions to allow it to go too much further and Moyes can hardly complain when, at any of their major rivals, he would never have reached Easter. Or maybe even Christmas. "David Moyes, in Italy, would have been sacked three times by now," Gianluca Vialli said in February. And since then, United's season has unravelled even more spectacularly.

That plodding defeat to Everton on Sunday means Moyes' team have lost, home and away, against both Merseyside clubs for the first time in the club's history and are guaranteed their least accomplished points total of the Premier League era. Manchester City have thrashed them twice. Newcastle have won at Old Trafford for the first time since 1972, and Swansea for the first time in their history. Stoke had not beaten United since 1984 until this season and West Bromwich had not won at Old Trafford since 1978. It has started to seem like a deception that this club won their 20th league title by 11 points last season. The Moyes era, to put it bluntly, has been awful beyond anyone's expectations. Even before we get to the fact there is a banner at Anfield these days saying "Back on our perch", with everything that means for the club looking up from seventh position, 23 points behind, with their shoelaces tied together.

Brendan Rodgers is one of the managers whose tactical expertise has made Moyes look stodgy and better suited for a club with lesser ambitions. Roberto Martínez, who replaced Moyes at Everton, is another. When Moyes said United had produced outstanding football at Goodison, the perplexing thing is that he actually sounded like he meant it. When they were losing 2-0 and conspicuously short of ideas, his assistant, Steve Round, produced a ring binder entitled "set-pieces" and it was tempting to wonder whether they understood this club, with its history of spontaneous brilliance, and the first requirement of genuinely exciting football.

A lot of the analysis will inevitably feature on the way Moyes has "lost" the dressing room. The truth is actually that he had never had the dressing room. Not properly anyway. Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic, important players at Old Trafford, could never be won over. Ryan Giggs, who understands the place as well as anyone, has been thinking about not just retiring but also quitting his coaching role and walking away from the club altogether.

When senior players rebel, younger ones follow. Danny Welbeck, the only other Mancunian in the squad, has just let it be known that he wants a move. Even that, in isolation, seems typical of the new United, with the story leaked on the morning Moyes faced his former club – just another demonstration of his lack of control and authority.

Just before the news broke that United intend to fire him, a supporters' poll on the Red Issue website had only 6% wanting him to survive the summer. The crowd might not have universally approved of the plane that flew a "Moyes Out" banner over Old Trafford recently – indeed, many jeered it – but that was more an issue about how they should go about making their discontent known. Moyes should just be glad it has never manifested itself in a full-on mutiny when that, feasibly, would have hurried up this whole process.

As it is, there are no apologies to be made for reiterating that United made a poor call deciding that a manager with no trophies or Champions League experience was superior to one who had won seven league titles in four countries, the European Cup with two clubs, the Uefa Cup, the FA Cup, two League Cups, the Spanish Cup and the Italian Cup, among other things.

José Mourinho, an authentic trophy machine, once went nine years without losing a home game and also has 20-odd recognised manager-of-the-year awards to his name. Yes, he can be an incredibly self-centred twerp at times, as we saw at the weekend. But so could Ferguson, frequently, and everyone in football knew Mourinho wanted the job. The counterargument is that he does not usually last beyond a certain time-frame whereas United wanted a long-term appointment. So let's say, hypothetically, he had stayed four years. They would have been a brilliant, trophy-laden four years.

Instead, Moyes will be informed that he has missed every realistic target that had been expected of him. No other manager has taken a team from first to seventh since Ray Harford at Blackburn Rovers in 1996 and it will be 17 months, minimum, before United are a Champions League club again. The bottom line is that a club this size has too much at stake to tolerate that kind of under-achievement, whether Ferguson agrees or not.

 

 

DTGuardian>

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Agony Newbie

Agony

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Why Manchester United couldn't waste another penny on failing Moyes

21 Apr 2014 21:15:00

The Scot is set to be relieved of his duties at Old Trafford after a disastrous first season in charge of the club and he can have few complaints as the issues continued to mount

By Duncan Castles

As embarrassing and as painful as it must have been, it was not the defeat at a ground where David Moyes established his Premier League coaching credentials across 11 years of assiduous, considered work that killed his hopes of being allowed a second summer transfer window at Old Trafford.

For United's key decision makers, Moyes has been a dead man talking for at least a month. Nor was the avalanche of unacceptable results - the snowballing list of unwanted Premier League-era lows - the critical factor in electing to dismiss a manager who turns 51 later this week. What likely undid Moyes was the damage his man management was inflicting upon United's bottom line.

Time and time again this season Moyes has sought to lay the blame for the club's unprecedented under-performance – from champions by 11 points to eliminated from all domestic contention by the end of January – on the squad he inherited from Sir Alex Ferguson. And as the executive vice-chairman promoted alongside him last summer encouraged Moyes' efforts in overhauling United's scouting department while telling public and press that the replacement Scot's job was safe, he grew confident of an immense summer investment in new players.

Discussion of a £100 million-plus spend on transfer fees alone became as common as a Moyes press conference emphasising the dire need to restructure. His recruitment plan involved the extraordinary measure for an elite European club of signing as many as six top-class players in the peak period of their careers; over the age of 25. And all this on top of the near £65m in transfer fees already thrown at Marouane Fellaini and Juan Mata, plus a club-record contract controversially awarded to Wayne Rooney.

In eight years of ownership by the Glazer family, Ferguson's net transfer spend averaged out at under £20m a campaign. The strategy Moyes proposed to turn his own failing results around was that he be entrusted with more than five seasons worth of such expenditure in one single summer splurge.

If such logic was never likely to appeal to owners whose interest in football has always been about profit rather than pleasure, Moyes' ability to destroy value in the players he'd been hired to work with counted heaviest against him.

Amongst Moyes' first requests as United's manager was that Nani be retained on a contract that made him one of the club's very best paid professionals. Less than a month into their first Premier League campaign together, Moyes had fallen out with the Portugal international and ultimately asked that he be sold. In total, the Scot has granted Nani just six League starts.

Ashley Young has 12, Shinji Kagawa 11, Javier Hernandez five. All are in what should be the most productive periods of their careers. All were regarded as prime assets under Ferguson. All have diminished - perhaps plummeted - in value as Moyes has continously kept them sidelined throughout the season.

In his handling of Rooney, Moyes undermined the team in a different manner. Pushed towards the periphery by Ferguson over his attitude to training, lifestyle and the club that had made him one of England's wealthiest sportsmen, Rooney wanted out as United's new manager was arriving.

Moyes correctly calculated that the striker could be retained by making him feel special again. No one had been more important than Robin van Persie to Ferguson's final League title, yet it was Rooney who was to be the central focus of United's new and decidely unimproved attack; his treatment around the training ground giving evidence to the Englishman's restored status.

As it became clear that an individual who'd fallen afoul of Ferguson and twice backed United into a corner over new contracts was to be rewarded with the most lucrative deal the club had ever paid, discontent with Moyes grew. The word amongst senior players was that their new boss simply did not understand the essence of United as a football club.

In his promotion of Rooney, his team selections, his overly cautious tactics, his man management and his words, they saw a man contradicting the principles Ferguson had worked so diligently to instil within them. Gradually ,the unease of senior players – Ryan Giggs notable amongst them – turned into a consensus that Moyes was the wrong man for the job. Ultimately, representations were made to the board that a change of manager was essential.

United's hierarchy was already thinking the same way. By March the sensible precaution of assessing candidates to replace Moyes had begun. By the end of that month, the word within the club was that Moyes was "dead" and that the six-year contract with which the Glazers had sought to bolster the first managerial appointment since they purchased the club would have its unpublicised break clause activated by the summer.

http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2896/premier-league/2014/04/21/4767351/-

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