David Moyes will always be known as Fergie’s failure
If you are a person who needs statistical evidence to validate any decision then David Moyes’ Manchester United experience will leave you spoilt for choice.
But the fact is you don’t need empirical analysis to recognise this decision is the right one. His short reign has been appalling - embarrassing, really - for him and the club.
A club that was so sure it had the right successor to Sir Alex Ferguson, it gave him a six year deal, because unlike other trigger happy Premier League employers, that was the way it did its business.
Embarrassing, you see. So what went wrong?
There were danger signs before Moyes even arrived at Old Trafford and I’m not talking about an ageing squad that had punched above its weight in winning last year’s league title.
When Ferguson left, United had only recently replaced its CEO after David Gill’s departure. All of a sudden you would have a new manager and new man running the business.
Manchester United is not a modern ‘dot com’ enterprise and steering it successfully needed a lot more care and understanding than these two ‘new-to-United’ employees had in their locker.
Both had taken on very big jobs without an old hand to guide them, despite Ferguson’s ubiquity.
But Moyes made the unavoidable situation he inherited countless times worse with his first big decision at the club.
He sacked the entire back room staff – Mick Phelan, Renee Meulenstein and Eric Steele.
These were staff who knew the way it worked at Old Trafford, knew the players better probably even than Ferguson and were liked by them too.
It was at best naive, at worst suicidal.
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He compounded this by moaning about the fixture list. That’s not the United way, and he made a very public mess of the Fellaini transfer.
No one would have minded too much if Fellaini had been only one of many marquee signings or if he had dominated every midfield in every game he played.
Neither turned out to be what happened. Moyes drew a transfer blank and Fellaini’s form never lived up to his bullying best at Everton.
And of course none of the above would have mattered had Moyes’ team been a winning team.
It wasn’t. Not only was it breaking all the wrong records but it was doing so in toothless fashion.
Manchester United teams are traditionally, snarling, exciting, cavalier, arrogant, even.
Moyes’ men seemed to ooze risk-averse timidity, lacking pace and ambition.
In a footballing heartbeat Moyes did what he couldn't do as an opposition manager and that was dismantle the inherent fear associated with a trip to Old Trafford.
Somewhere along the way, consciously or not the players focus seemed to desert them.
It had become a mess – personified by last weekend’s worse than tame performance versus - ironically - Everton.
Given all that, there is no way United’s American owners thought they could trust Moyes with a 150 million pounds kitty.
Time is not on United’s side. In all honesty deals are being done for next season, right now.
The big clubs don’t wait until the summer. And of course it is a truncated summer – most of the best players will have the World Cup on their minds.
Giggs, Van Gaal or whoever now, it will take quite some work to repair this season’s damage.
As for Moyes, he will of course get a new challenge in time and will probably do very well but from now on, he’ll always be Fergie’s failure wherever he goes.
He’s mainly to blame, of course, but there are many others who haven’t helped much.