Manchester United could have had Jose Mourinho but instead they ended up with David Moyes By Martin Samuel - Sport 22:25 21 Apr 2014, updated 07:08 22 Apr 2014 Glazer family do not trust Moyes with £200m summer transfer kitty Appointing manager without elite experience was a leap of faith by United United are missing their famed attacking swagger under cautious Moyes Moyes had a fabulous opportunity to replace Ferguson - and blew it It would have boiled down to a simple question by the end. Can we trust this man to spend £200million? The Glazers would have sifted through all the available evidence and decided they could not. And David Moyes will cease to be Manchester United manager at the end of this season, or perhaps sooner. The final reckoning would not have taken long. Even Moyes’s staunchest advocates had exhausted their ammunition by the time the final whistle blew at Goodison Park on Sunday. Appointing a manager without experience in the elite pool was a leap of faith and it has not been supported by results. VIDEO Scroll down for Moyes despondent post- loss pressers Had Moyes proved he could venture into new territory and thrive, then United’s owners would have willingly backed him in the transfer market this summer. Yet he has been unable to dispel the doubts that existed going into this season. Hes failed every challenge, so why would they trust him to spend £200m? He didn’t have Champions League experience and Manchester United conducted an inconsistent campaign that ended in the desperate measure of playing Wayne Rooney, unfit, against Bayern Munich. He didn’t have title-winning experience and United were seventh within three matches, not rising higher than fifth since. He had never won a trophy and the closest Manchester United came under him was a Capital One Cup semi-final, lost to Sunderland. He was famed for caution at Everton and United are missing their attacking swagger this season. The job was, as predicted by a number of fearful United fans, too big for him. MOYES BROKEN RECORDS First time Everton have beaten United home and away since 1969-70 First time Everton and Liverpool have done a league double over United in the same season First time Man City and Liverpool have beaten United home and away in the same season since the Premier League started First time United have conceded a first- minute goal in the Premier League (Edin Dzeko for Man City) Guaranteed to finish the season with their lowest Premier League points tally First time failed to qualify for the Champions League since 1995 First time suffered three defeats in a row since 2001 Eliminated in the FA Cup third round, something which happened just once under Ferguson First ever home defeat by Swansea First home defeat by Newcastle since 1972 First home defeat by West Bromwich since 1978 First league defeat by Stoke since 1984 And Moyes throughout his career has never spent anywhere near the sums that are set aside to revive Manchester United this summer. So why should the Glazers continue believing in him? Having failed so dismally with every other new challenge, why should he be up to this one? Sadly, Moyes has not added one new skill to his c.v. since leaving Everton, no fresh learning, nothing to suggest he is at home in the elite. And the overhaul of United this summer is a task for a high-end coach. Big money will be spent, big names will be jettisoned. With no Champions League, or maybe even European, football to entice leading players, United must show they mean business. The presence of Moyes does not speak of ambition, not while he still has an L-plate attached to his jacket. Ed Woodward, Manchester United’s chief executive, travelled to Paris on the day of Chelsea’s recent Champions League quarter-final tie. He said he might not even take in the game with Paris Saint-Germain but knew that major Champions League fixtures were wonderful occasions for gathering football’s powerbrokers in one place. Leading club executives, agents, super-agents, they would all be there. Meetings, meetings, meetings were what Woodward said he had planned. And maybe he didn’t like what he heard. Perhaps the super-agents were not happy to place their super-clients with a club in the doldrums and a lame duck manager who could be gone by Christmas if results did not improve. Perhaps Woodward discovered that with, say, Carlo Ancelotti at the helm, talks would progress more smoothly. VIDEO COMPILATION of Moyes despondent post- loss pressers MORE... Jurgen Klopp among favourites to replace David Moyes at Manchester United, with Sir Alex Ferguson, Louis van Gaal and Ryan Giggs also in the frame Man City fans plead with rivals United not to sack football genius David Moyes Gary Neville calls for Manchester United to tell the truth NOW on David Moyes as former captain reveals repulse at way news broke Moyes is OUT! Glazers finally lose patience with Fergies failed replacement and now United boss will pay for it by losing his job in the summer David Moyes Manchester United job on the line after 11th loss of the campaign Dawdling in the transfer market, poor man management, small club mentality and humiliations at home and abroad... 10 reasons why it all went wrong for Moyes at Man United It is pointless pretending Moyes carries the same clout as his contemporaries at the major European clubs. He couldn’t entice Leighton Baines from Everton and they had worked together for six years.Ancelotti, or Louis van Gaal, would bring a contacts book and a gold standard reputation. Their presence shows a club has intent, their track records increase expectation of success. Moyes’s next trophy will be his first. He no doubt imagined breaking his duck with Manchester United but that has not happened. He has no profile among players beyond these shores — and what little he does is now bad. He’s the guy who stuffed up at Manchester United; just as, over here, it is Gerardo Martino’s duff season at Barcelona, not his eight titles in South America, that are known. With the Champions League creating a semi-permanent elite, football is no longer fluid as it once was. There is a hierarchy and Moyes is not part of it, no matter the endorsement of Sir Alex Ferguson. That is what will end with Moyes’s departure, too. Manchester United: the Ferguson years. While the Chosen One occupied his seat, the hope was that the Ferguson dynasty continued. Here was a manager cast in his image, with the same values, capable of seamless transition. It was hoped the old ways would remain, but what now? Ancelotti is a calming presence, a healer, but Jurgen Klopp is a German heavy metal fan with a nose for mischief, and Jose Mourinho learned many of his confrontational skills from Van Gaal, now believed to be the leading candidate. Whoever comes will rip up what remains of the existing blueprint because paramount importance is a swift return to the Champions League. Adnan Januzaj aside, Manchester United next season will largely be restructured around proven, established internationals or young players who have already made the Premier League grade, such as Luke Shaw. This is not a grandiose project, but a pragmatic, quick and expensive fix of this season’s malaise. Had Mourinho been available, he would have been perfect for the task. Some will argue, with justification, that he should have got the job in the first place. Hilarious #MOYESIN #MOYESOUT rap battle by Dan Bull There will be sympathy for Moyes, stepping into Ferguson’s giant shoes and falling headlong down the stairs, but the bottom line is he got a fabulous opportunity and blew it. He stepped into Fergie’s giant shoes... and fell headlong down the stairs He did not inherit a vintage Manchester United team but it still won the title by 11 points, scored 11 more goals than any rival and had a goal difference superior by seven. The defence was the most porous of any team in the top four but, even so, nobody can have expected a collapse of this magnitude. If Moyes cannot move the club beyond seventh place, Manchester United will have equalled the worst title defence in Premier League history, matched only by Blackburn Rovers the season after Kenny Dalglish departed. The most damning numbers, however, concern their performances against the better teams. In 17 league matches against clubs in the top half of the table, Moyes has won just three: Stoke City on October 26, Arsenal on November 10 and Newcastle United on April 5. He is the first Manchester United manager to lose home and away to Liverpool and Everton in the same season, the first to lose at home to Swansea City, the first to fail to qualify for the Champions League since 1995, the first to concede in the opening minute of a Premier League match, the first to lose three games in a row since 2001, the first to lose at home to Newcastle since 1972, the first to lose at home to West Bromwich Albion since 1978 and to Stoke since 1984. He went out in the third round of the FA Cup, which Ferguson suffered only once in his Old Trafford career and, even if Moyes wins all of his four remaining matches, this will be Manchester United’s lowest points total in the history of the Premier League. As if this was not bad enough, the rise of Liverpool — and on a personal note the improvement at Everton under Roberto Martinez — has put Moyes’s struggles into sharp relief. While United have plummeted, Liverpool have risen, from seventh to first in what may represent the greatest improvement by any championship- winning team in English football since Everton under Howard Kendall in 1983-84. And Liverpool’s rebirth is what Manchester United fear most, not just as a local rival but as a force in the marketplace. Liverpool were a global brand in 1989 when Michael Knighton was still juggling balls on the pitch at Old Trafford, and if they take their place among Europe’s elite again there will be older generations across Asia, in particular, primed and waiting to influence the next editions of the family. Manchester United’s revenue streams are those of the market leader, but a well-run Liverpool with an eye on commercial opportunities abroad could, if not match them, then at least take a significant slice of that action. If the Premier League trophy is secured at Anfield on May 11, its next destination after the open-top bus parade through the city the following day will be Dublin for a game against Shamrock Rovers on May 14, followed by a trip to Mauritius to play Celtic, provisionally, on May 18. Then there is the pre-season tour of the United States, taking in Chicago, New York and Charlotte. These are all traditional United strongholds, suddenly under threat. Chelsea have encroached on United’s territory, too, with Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore now listing the London club among those with a significant following abroad. Woodward, the United chief executive, has been hailed as a wonder salesman, but he has never had to sell a club in seventh place before — to big business, big agents or big players. Moyes is the first casualty of that unexpected challenge. Wondering whether the manager could grow into the job was just another question United’s bosses had no time to answer. Ultimately, Moyes wasn’t the Chosen One, or even a special one. Instead, he became the Problem One. And swiftly, that problem has been solved. Clearing the mess left behind, however, suggests a fresh set of problems for United are only just beginning. MORE... Jurgen Klopp among favourites to replace David Moyes at Manchester United, with Sir Alex Ferguson, Louis van Gaal and Ryan Giggs also in the frame Man City fans plead with rivals United not to sack football genius David Moyes Gary Neville calls for Manchester United to tell the truth NOW on David Moyes as former captain reveals repulse at way news broke Moyes is OUT! Glazers finally lose patience with Fergies failed replacement and now United boss will pay for it by losing his job in the summer David Moyes Manchester United job on the line after 11th loss of the campaign Dawdling in the transfer market, poor man management, small club mentality and humiliations at home and abroad... 10 reasons why it all went wrong for Moyes at Man United JUMP TO... NEXT STORIES MOST READ NEWS DONT MISS © 2014 Associated Newspapers Ltd Shout of order: David Moyes sees United
Posted on: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 07:21:13 +0000
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