david-moyes

It was the moment so many Manchester United supporters craved. Late April 2014, after 10 months in charge, David Moyes finally gone to dancing, if not on the streets of Salford, then a surfeit of social media. Moyes’ dismissal ended an anarchic period at Old Trafford; the brutal deconstruction of an experienced manager. History will long remember Moyes for his ineptitude in a job that was always too much, and the club for a shocking lack of a post-Ferguson succession planning. With the Scot’s Sunderland at Old Trafford this Christmas, memories flood back of time many want to forget…

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Back to his roots. Not that David Moyes has a significant relationship with Spain. None in fact. Yet, while the Scot’s tenure at Old Trafford still brings cold sweats to even the most hardened Manchester United fan, there is no denying Real Sociedad’s is a bold choice of new manager: Moyes on an 18-month contract. A middle ranking club, for a middle ranking manager; both specialist in building more than the sum of meagre parts.

In truth United was always a step too far for Moyes – an alien environment that set the Scot’s worldview spinning. San Sebastián, even with its distinct language and proud Basque culture, should hold no fear for the former Everton manager. It may even be the making of Moyes after a humiliating experiment gone wrong in Manchester. Make it here and the Scot will reinvent a personal brand gone horribly awry over the past 18 months.

These are not easy times at Sociedad though, and Moyes will be far from taking over the league-winning squad he inherited at United. Six defeats in 11 La Liga games and an early exit at the Europa League qualifying stage brought Jagoba Arrasate’s reign to an abrupt end in early November. Supporters hopes for renewed progress this season, after finishing fourth two years ago and seventh in 2013/14, have been dashed on a string of poor results. The slide has been dramatic, with chairman Jokin Aperribay acting after Txuriurdin slipped to 19th in La Liga.

Few at Anoeta hold any sympathy for Arrasate though – a man whose passive brand of football alienated both the terraces and his playing squad. Where former manager Philippe Montanier built an attacking side around the ample talents of Antoinne Griezmann, Inigo Martinez and Carlos Vela, Arrasate has seemingly preached a more conservative – and unsuccessful – approach.

“Fans did not believe in him and, more damagingly, nor did the players,” concludes the Guardian‘s Sid Lowe. “The team lost identity and lost their way. Good footballers stagnated, bereft of leadership.”

It is, those of a crueler persuasion might add, an assessment that could have been made at almost any point during Moyes’ humbling Old Trafford tenure.

Arrasate, an inexperienced former primary school teacher, was not helped by summer departures. Griezmann joined Atlético Madrid for more than €25 million, goalkeeper Cladio Bravo ended up at Barcelona for a little under half that sum, and forward Haris Seferovic moved to the Budesliga with Eintract Frankfurt. In came the Icelandic striker Alfred Finnbogason, who scored at almost one per game in the Dutch league, and the ever erratic Esteban Granero. Neither has settled well in San Sebastián.

Yet, this is a challenge Moyes should enjoy. Relish even. First, to arrest an alarming decline in the club’s fortunes and to stamp his authority on players not able, or in some cases, ready to reach the club’s recent heights. Next, to drive the Basque side back into the Champions League – a platform that Moyes very much believes is one he has earned.

Moyes inherits a squad bereft of confidence, even if there is talent. Martínez and Vela remain, while youngsters such as Jon Gaztañaga and Rubén Pardo will compliment the experienced captain Xabi Prieto. Moyes, diligent as ever, will already have formed a view of his squad’s strengths and weaknesses – one bolstered as the Scot watched his first training session at Sociedad’s Zubieta complex on Wednesday.

Moyes will also need plenty luck. After all, he is unlikely to receive any more patience than the 10 months proffered at Old Trafford. Sociedad have enjoyed – or is that endured – 15 managers in the last 14 years, including John Toshack and Chris Coleman. Neither lasted more than 18 months.

Nor will the Scot enjoy a hefty budget; Sociedad remains every inch a ‘selling club’. It is, though, an inspiring town with a club that aspires to grow beyond its current station.

“I have spoken to him and I have told him that he is going to a marvellous place,” said former Moyes’ charge Mikel Arteta. “He is going to find a club that in many aspects resembles Everton. It’s like a family and with a group of players that are currently in a lower position that they deserve to be.”

Moyes will also be able to build on his own terms, free from the pressure of replacing Sir Alex Ferguson, and the expectations of a playing squad that simply did not believe the former Evertonian had the right tools for the job.

“He is a coach who had no luck here,” said Juan Mata, who views Moyes with more respect than many. “Replacing Sir Alex Ferguson is not easy. Not for him not for anyone. He was unlucky. He did not got the results we wanted. He did a very good job at Everton. He works hard and prepares really well for the games.”

Whether that preparation will also include Moyes’ former coaching team is yet to be revealed, although none of Steve Round, Phil Neville or Jimmy Lumsden is currently employed. Yet, the Scot may also do well to remember a lesson from Steve McClaren’s renaissance at FC Twente, where the former United assistant manager used a predominantly local backroom staff. Significantly, Moyes will have to overcome the cultural and language barriers inherent in any first-time-abroad position.

“My head was spinning and I felt nothing was going to work,” said McClaren, whose Derby County side is top of the Championship. “After six months, you start to adapt and buy into their culture and get to know the league you’re in.”

Moyes will also enjoy working away from the extreme spotlight turned on Old Trafford, and in a league where the focus is on Real Madrid and Barcelona first, and everybody else a very distant second. He may face the pressure to improve on a disastrous start to the campaign, but there will be no talk of crisis two games into his reign.

Sociedad faces newly promoted Deportivo La Coruna at the weekend, with fellow relegation strugglers Elche to follow. Not until the fixture with Barcelona on 4 January will Moyes’ new side face anybody in the top six. It is a huge opportunity to hit the ground running.

Still, Moyes was proffered a similarly gilded legacy at United – a title-winning squad and a huge contract. The Scot can ill afford another calamity if a reputation destroyed is to recover.

So there it is – the moment so many Manchester United supporters seemingly craved, at least if social media is any barometer. After 10 months in charge at Old Trafford David Moyes has gone – to dancing on the streets of Twitter. It has been an anarchic period; a failure of manager, management and Sir Alex Ferguson’s succession plan. History’s finger will long point at Moyes for his ineptitude in a job that was always too much, although United supporters understand that blame is multi-faceted.

There was something opportune in the appallingly mishandled dismissal. This is a club that at one proclaims commercial acumen rivaled by none, but is chaotically mismanaged by Ed Woodward and his cohort of mad marketing men.

It was perhaps appropriately sleazy to leak Moyes’ sacking to the press some 24 hours ahead of the man being told by Woodward in person. That Moyes remained at Carrington some two hours after his dismissal – to wish his former players well – says much for his dignity if not for the former Evertonian’s suitability for the role.

Yet, Moyes has become a wrecking ball at Old Trafford – one that holds long-lasting consequences. From ripping up last summer’s transfer plans, to smashing players’ confidence and beyond, United will have to spend much and perhaps wait some time to recover from the Scot’s reign.

Destruction began early, with a pre-season programme that focused strongly on marketing and less on shaping the team against high quality opponents. The boot camp approach alienated players from the start. Moyes moaned about the fixture list, but the Scot’s dedication to long-running aerobic drills and little ball work left United undercooked on the ball and over-baked without it.

The manager’s deconstruction of Shinji Kagawa’s pre-season was symptomatic of a greater problem to come – a genuine lack of control. The Japanese player’s summer was split in two, disrupting what should have been a carefully managed programme for one of Moyes’ more creative outlets.

But it was in the market that Moyes was at his most indecisive, while demonstrating a perplexing naïvety. Cesc Fabregas, Ander Herrera, Gareth Bale, Leighton Baines, Sami Khedira and Daniele De Rossi were pursued by fax to little effect. Thiago Alcântara, lined-up for a £20 million transfer by Ferguson and David Gill, was inexplicably rejected. Perhaps Moyes genuinely believed other targets were available. They were not.

Marouane Fellaini’s eventual capture was a farce unworthy of far lesser clubs than United, but one that the new manager seemingly endorsed. United’s decision to pay £4 million over Fellaini’s buy-out clause was embarrassing; the player’s obvious lack of quality left a gaping hole in midfield. It is all very good installing a ‘high tech scouting system’ at Carrington, but if the outcome is a failure to deliver high-quality acquisitions then little improvement has occurred.

Moyes spent much of the summer courting players he would later alienate – Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidić and Ryan Giggs to name three. In pandering to Wayne Rooney the Scot created a rod for his own back and a long-term problem for the club. The sycophantic choice to place Rooney on a pedestal garnered early season energy from the striker, but it has largely been a campaign of perspiration when inspiration was desperately required. Too often has the forward been flattered by a manager desperate to please.

It is symptomatic of another Moyes trait – the failure to pick to form. There were, as just one example, times during United’s 3-0 victory at West Bromwich Albion in March that striker Robin van Persie appeared disinterested to the point of disrespect. It was the nadir of the Dutchman’s season, yet Danny Welbeck and Javier Hernández have spent most of the campaign on the sidelines. The latter may still chose to leave.

Indeed, Moyes’ use of United’s squad is a contradiction. In 51 games the Scot has rotated each time, yet as the season began Moyes over-used veteran Ferdinand to such an extent that the 34-year-old was burnt out by October. Moyes has little idea how to manage a large and diverse squad.

The summer also brought unnecessary and destructive turmoil in the back room – it undermined Moyes’ cause. There was much debate around the decision to sack Mike Phelan along with goalkeeping coach Eric Steele, while the Scot failed to retain Rene Meulensteen. The loss of knowledge, experience and link between management and players has proven devastating. He changed too much, not too little – a sign of weakness from the off.

On the pitch Moyes’ start could hardly have been more positive – a 4-1 victory at Michael Laudrup’s Swansea City. Yet, even in the moment of triumph there was a sense that van Persie had rescued a laboured United performance. Over the coming months the new man would prove himself far from the dynamic, proactive, coach that many supporters believe United missed out on when passing over José Mourinho and Pep Guardola.

If results have been poor then United’s lack of style has exacerbated supporters’ anger. The two-legged defense-minded strategy employed against Bayern Munich was no one-off – Moyes has sought a safety-first approach all season. United has scored just 56 goals in the Premier League to Liverpool’s 96.

It’s not just about goals though. United’s style under Moyes has rarely brought supporters to their feet save for those few matches where the squad’s more creative players have been unleashed.

The approach has often been one-dimensional in an era of tactical innovation. In defeat at Stoke City earlier this year United launched 47 long balls forward into the swirling Potteries wind – just 13 found their target. Against Fulham at Old Trafford United delivered more than 80 crosses to laughably little effect.

Indeed, there is a sense in which the better football this season has been discovered by accident. In victory at Newcastle United Adnan Januzaj, Juan Mata and Kagawa combined to provide a flexible, vibrant attacking performance rarely seen under Moyes. It was a fluke that the trio was deployed in tandem at all. Januzaj was overlooked for Ashley Young at the start, while Kagawa and Mata enjoyed more central roles only because Rooney and van Persie sat out the game. There was a similar pattern at Crystal Palace and West Ham United.

Moyes’ negativity has become the punchline to a very poor joke. The manager’s bizarre decision to substitute Rooney for Chris Smalling on 88 minutes as United led Southampton at Old Trafford last October seems a good précis for a season of caution.

Meanwhile, off the pitch there have been too many mixed messages – misplaced positivity one moment, the words of a man out of his depth the next. Moyes blamed referees, the FA, injuries, poor luck, and Sir Alex. Anybody, it seems, bar the man in charge.

The peripatetic use of the word “try” became a social media meme, while the Scot’s declaration that Manchester City are “at the sort of level we are aspiring to” brought anger that will take some time to quell. They’re probably still laughing at the Etihad.

“I don’t know what we have to do to win,” Moyes confessed after United’s loss at Stoke City in February. United supporters concurred and so, in the end, did the players evidenced by a rash of dressing room leaks that would never have occurred under Ferguson.

The political factions emerged with alacrity. In one camp the ‘Everton mob’ of Steve Round, Jimmy Lumsden, Chris Woods, Phil Neville and Fellaini. In the other a large group of disaffected players, player-coaches, and former greats.

Round and Lumsden have gone with the manager; Woods may follow in the summer. The stench may take longer to dissipate and United’s highly-paid stars have much to answer for.

In the end results signalled the end – perhaps after United’s loss to Olympiakos in February. Six defeats in as many games against City, Liverpool and Everton and just one win against the Premier League’s top six is a record that would have brought dismissal for greater men than Moyes.

Yet, it is a period that leaves the club in a desperate limbo, with few coaches of elite quality available and another – Louis van Gaal – tied up until after the World Cup.

The coming window is perhaps the most crucial in United’s recent past, with half-a-dozen players leaving and potentially as many arriving again. After last summer’s incompetence it is one in which Woodward must excel, but just perhaps without a manager in tow.

Should the club fail to capture its main targets the mediocre pattern set this season may be ingrained for longer than anybody wants, whomever is brought in to replace Moyes.

The new man will get money, although probably not the £150 million plus briefed from the shadowier corners of United’s communications department. After all, failure to invest over the past eight seasons left Moyes with a squad far removed from Ferguson’s best.

What the new man won’t get is time. Not any more. United has become a club like any other – Moyes’ chaotic reign left no other choice.