The end of the error
The end of the error
The failure of the David Moyes experiment leaves everyone at Manchester United weaker — and a dismal search for positives
The failure of the David Moyes experiment leaves everyone at Manchester United weaker — and a dismal search for positives
Photo: Reuters
“In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.”
In business management there’s something called the Peter Principle. In short, it refers to the problem of promoting an employee and taking them out of a job at which they have excelled. Every time you put someone at a higher level, you run the risk of finding that they’re simply not cut out for the new tasks you’ve put in front of them.
The terribly sad thing about the clinical disposal of David Moyes as Manchester United manager is that so few people come out of the episode with much credit.
A club which styles itself as a bastion of class and honour deserves a manager who can deliver a compelling, attacking, attractive brand of football. Given the choice, many United fans (myself included) would rather have an entertaining team than a heaving trophy cabinet. David Moyes, all too frequently, failed to deliver on his basic requirement: produce football capable of turning heads and winning hearts.
Sir Matt Busby once said that Manchester United strove for perfection; “If we fail,” he said, “we might just have to settle for excellence.” United fans sing of winning 20 English championships by “playing football the Busby Way”: Busby’s way was to attack, attack, and then attack some more. Defence was properly organised but attack was prioritised, with flourish and finesse.
By contrast, David Moyes lost the confidence of all four of his strikers — Robin van Persie notoriously unhappy with his training methods, Wayne Rooney uneasy about working with the only man who ever sold him (and ultimately needing more money to convince him to stay), Javier Hernandez having a public crisis of confidence after precious little game time, and Danny Welbeck so disillusioned that he would rather leave his boyhood club altogether than have to work under Moyes for another season.
He lost the patience of his first-choice defenders by asking them to watch a video of one of his old defenders (to which Rio Ferdinand responded: “And what the f*** has he ever won?). He leeched the swagger out of his team with incessant defensive drills — and employed an assistant whose contribution towards the Busby Way was a pre-printed booklet of ‘set plays’.
But, much as it pains me to say it, I wish he’d been let down more gently.
Nobody should be in any doubt that Manchester United actively sought to push David Moyes out the door.
It is not a coincidence that four prominent British football journalists all tweeted their headline at exactly 2:15pm, or that three major newspapers all published stories to that effect at exactly that time. (Two other papers had their pieces up by 2:20pm; the pieces were too long to have been written in the five intervening minutes.)
It is clear, therefore, that the club’s directors had seen Moyes’ charges slide to an abject 2-0 defeat to his old club Everton and decided that enough was enough.
You’d wonder whether the board of directors was unanimous in that view. Companies House records show Sir Alex Ferguson as being made a director of Manchester United Football Club Ltd last October. If it were this company’s directors who made the decision, Ferguson would either have found himself in an isolated minority — at loggerheads with six Glazers and several more of their proxies — or a willing accessory to the sacking of the successor he hand-picked less than 12 months earlier. (And this is before any mention of Sir Bobby Charlton, who also featured prominently in the announcement of Moyes’ appointment.)
Either way: if the directors had already made up their minds, there was no reason for the club to plant stories with five newspapers at 2:15pm (75 minutes before trading began on the New York Stock Exchange) and light a fire underneath the manager, only to then turn its back on him and plead ignorance of the whole affair.
The only apparent reason for the delay in confirming the news would be to try and nudge David Moyes — a decent man, though perhaps naive — into resignation, saving the club around £6m in severance pay by doing so. The money is not insubstantial, but a relative pittance given the supposed £150m being handed to his replacement for transfers, and the significant signing-on fee that the successor will command. In the cold light of day, it seems a touch classless — and almost callous.
It is also tremendously sad for David Moyes, whose footballing resume is the epitome of honest decency. As a young pro he was bullied by a teammate for his devout Christianity; as a journeyman footballer he endured fallow periods before finally settling at Preston North End, where he entered management with no aplomb and no expectations. Yet from there he earned his way up to the Premier League, taking relegation candidates into regular European competitors and catching the eye of Alex Ferguson along the way.
Where stands Moyes now? A man of his age and talents does not deserve unemployment. He does not deserve to follow the paths of Wilf McGuinness, Frank O’Farrell or Tommy Docherty — all of whom struggled to keep a steady post after leaving Old Trafford. Ron Atkinson’s career might not be one he hoped to emulate, but it might be the most realistic aspiration. (Moyes could do worse than follow Atkinson’s path and take over at Aston Villa, assuming he is willing to accept the lesser status.)
A few other bullet points:
More could — and has — been made of the calamitous role of Ed Woodward in botching many of last season’s transfers. It is certainly emblematic of bad planning to have allowed his predecessor David Gill to have left in the same summer as Alex Ferguson. But the strawman argument about Ferguson’s first four seasons falls part in the cold reality that Ferguson inherited a team facing relegation. Yes, David Moyes inherited an ageing squad, but one packed with champions — and then spent £65m trying to make it better. Moyes comes out a lesser man.
Ferguson’s lasting reputation at Manchester United will never be in doubt — if his 38 trophies don’t prove it, the stand and street which carry his name certainly should. But that should not gloss over his error in anointing a deeply unqualified Moyes as his chosen successor. He had made previous mistakes — Bébé, Kleberson and Eric Djemba-Djemba to name but a few — but none where the stakes were so high. His greatness remains, but his name will be somewhat tarnished.
If you were a director of a $3bn company — whose corporate empire was built on the work of a manager who’d been there longer than you — would you allow your fortunes to rest with an unproven replacement without a shred of comparable experience? Wouldn’t you at least give him an interview? Wouldn’t you ask a successful, fiersome, fiery, soon-to-be-unemployed Iberian if he was interested?
(As a defence of the directors, I do believe their timing in sacking Moyes was probably correct. Season ticket renewals are due soon; and the World Cup will play havoc with the usual flow of the transfer market, where the Glazers’ borrowed £150m needs to be wisely spent. If Moyes’ contract included a cheaper break clause after failing to qualify for the Champions League, United acted to lance the boil at a decent time. Ryan Giggs is not yet capable of running a team beyond a short-term basis, and a more qualified caretaker would not have been available any sooner.)The loss of Alex Ferguson served only to highlight how he had personally held together the jagged scraps of an ageing squad. It is universally accepted now that Moyes inherited an ailing team — but that ailing team had won the English title by 11 points, and were perhaps unlucky in the manner of their European exit. All of that serves to underline the on-field impact of taking a debt-free club, borrowing £660m to buy it, and leaving the club to repay the debts while still sucking out a healthy profit for themselves. United’s transfer spending under the Glazer family is around £450m — around the same amount repaid in debts and interest. United sold their best player, Cristiano Ronaldo, to Real Madrid in 2009 for the gargantuan sum of £80m… where did that money go?
Is it consistent to give David Moyes’ sacking such a warm welcome, barely weeks after jeering a banner which called for him to be fired? Much of the jeering might well have been directed at the expensive folly of hiring a plane, but not many United fans appeared to be terribly supportive of the banner reading ‘WRONG ONE — MOYES OUT’. It’s jarring that, only a few weeks later, so many are happy to see him go. Has the attitude changed simply because of the predictably terrible performances against Liverpool, Manchester City and Everton?
The activity of investors on the New York Stock Exchange suggests that the overall value of Manchester United plc is higher today than at any point during Moyes’ tenure. The last time United shares commanded a price close to $19 was in the week before Ferguson announced his retirement. United’s sponsorship deals are more lucrative than their on-field prize money, so performance on the pitch is not the prime motivation for its investors, but the markets appear happier with Ryan Giggs in charge and no permanent successor than they did with David Moyes on a six-year contract.
So where are the positives? The coaching roles of Ryan Giggs and Phil Neville are probably to be embraced: Giggs has the makings of a great manager, though perhaps not within this decade. The advance of Adnan Januzaj is encouraging, as is the late-blooming combination of Kagawa-Mata-Rooney in attacking midfield. Securing the services of Wayne Rooney is a bonus, but the jury is still out on offering a major pay rise (and other unstated privileges) to a player who is already past his best.
Perhaps, if anything, the David Moyes experiment will be a guide of what not to do. It is, perhaps, a sign that a 21st-century football team — packed with 21st-century millionaires, working for a 21st-century corporation, and watched worldwide with 21st-century technology — needs a manager as metropolitan as the dressing room he inherits.
But on the anniversary of Robin van Persie’s wondergoal to seal Manchester United’s 20th league title, it’s depressing to conclude that any positives from the David Moyes Experiment have virtually nothing to do with David Moyes.