Manchester United Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread - See Mod Warning in OP, 09/11

Now let's be honest about Moyes - yes there were definitely holes in the squad, but at the same time he did have Vidic and Ferdinand at CB on top of Evans, so was not exactly in dire straits there. Up front he could not complain with RVP, Rooney, Hernandez and Welbeck. LB with Evra well past it, the wide spots, and CM he was in a bad spot with... but in the same breath, many reports said he went with Fellaini over Herrera in the end because he had seen more of Fellaini. That was one of the worst signings the club has made in a long, long, long time and was entirely down to him - Herrera would not have made all the difference but is obviously a massive upgrade. At LB, we could have had Coentrao who Madrid were basically trying to throw at us on loan, but again missed out because of Moyes blind insistence on chasing Leighton Baines which also led to Fellaini costing us more (and who also would not have been good enough for a top team, in my estimation).

On the pitch, he had some major flaws also. Even though our midfield was weak, he had no idea (or at least no interest) when it came to using our best player there in Carrick correctly, who had been the best DM in the league the year prior. He got a guy who was never a great athlete but was as good as anyone in the league positionally at CM, and tried to get him to turn into a workhorse along with whoever partnered him. He then made this worse by insisting upon a deep defensive line and out forwards/wingers typically staying quite high up the pitch.

And yes, he was left with poor wide players in Young/Valencia as well as the eternal question mark that is/was Nani (and I will fully credit him with getting Januzaj going)... but he did nothing to combat this. He just insisted on "get wide and cross" over and over and over and over. Even when we got a top end #10 in Mata he still persisted for a long time in playing like this, trying to turn him into a winger which he was never going to work as in that system. Of course the height of this (and the real tipping point for a lot of United fan I know) was bragging about breaking the league record for crosses in a home game with Fulham, when it wasn't having much effect at all (one of their CBs commented how it played right into their hands since he had played in the Conference for a good while, if I recall) and would up in a 2-2 draw at home to the bottom club in the league.

And that was the real issue with Moyes... he had no idea what to do when we took a lead. Some tried to label it as "just unlucky" but the fact is whenever we went up a goal you could guarantee that we would just throw 8 men behind the ball and desperately try to cling on for dear life rather than doing what we always did, which was keeping to what had got us ahead and looking to expand our lead. It didn't matter who we were playing against, top 4 quality side, midtable team, relegation fodder... once we had a lead with 20-25 minutes left his game plan was similar to what a newly promoted team would do against the league champions. Even though we held on (just barely, and in large part thanks to DDG if I recall) the Olympiakos game was the height of this, and again was a tipping point for many.

Don't get me wrong, he seems a very decent fella, I wish him the best moving forward and he has proven to be a good manager in the mid table type of range - Newcastle for example may do well to pick him up if Pardew gets the sack. Bit that is about his ceiling, he proved to be completely out of his depth on a number of levels and simply just not up to the task.

ericzeking wrote: »

Sure that's it... the incomparability of the squads surely vindicates him somewhat, he took over a squad who had done it all and had just been cut loose from the Ferguson era having achieved that one final high, they quite obviously went on holiday and plenty comments since from inside have backed that up. They didn't respect him, and why would they they'd been working with one of the greatest of all time.
He had an impossible task in hindsight.
It was mentioned above that he had Rio and Vidic and that was a positive, if anything he would have had a better chance of succeeding without such players who were so influential yet were disinterested themselves. A clear out a year earlier would have served him better and given him a chance.

Quality wise LVG has a practically brand new squad of superstars with no ties to the Fergie era after the biggest transfer splurge ever so I'd say its pretty different alright.

Moyes focked up, no doubt, but he was on a hiding to nothing almost every which way he looked. He will be an excellent manager somewhere and I'd say it'll be at a level a lot higher than the 'mid table' which many are throwing about willy nilly.

The whole thing is looked at in a far too simplistic level in my opinion...82 crosses vs fulham....finished 7th with the champions...well he must be sh!t so...

Moyes didn't have the players respect because he was not up to the job and it showed right from the outset. For one when he got rid of most of Ferguson's proven backroom staff and replaced them with his own he was taking a gamble, and that gamble proven to be a failure when he took older players and drove them into the ground during training sessions for... Well God only knows why. His training methods were draconian and amateurish by pretty much all accounts, which is why Ferdinand went from having a quality season they year before, and a good first month or two under Moyes, to falling off the face of a cliff through mismanagement. Vidic would have been extremely useful for us to have held onto for another year or two, but even he has said that Moyes was the reason he left.

Also, LVG got a squad without three of out most experienced defenders who had formed perhaps the best backline in the clubs history and all left at once - that's a major challenge that Moyes didn't have to deal with. He did get Di Maria and Falcao in for us... but this "brand new squad of superstars" talk ends there. Moyes could have had Herrera but opted for Fellaini so he has no complaints to make with that one. Blind and Rojo are looking decent enough but to try and label either as a superstar is kind of laughable at this point (Vidic and Carrick both have string arguments to be superior, neither of which LVG has had yet) and Shaw is a long term project with a lot of development to be done still.

As for the crosses against Fulham and finish in the league there were far more issues than that and I think/hope you know that. If he wants to be a manager at a top club in the modern era he will have to update a lot of his methods.