Moyes’s appointment only made sense if in the short term he could ensure that Manchester United was ticking over with the ideology, culture, and methods firmly entrenched by Sir Alex Ferguson. He was hired because he supposedly ensured consistency and stability.
Instead within days of his appointment, Moyes, Woodward, Round, P Neville, Lumsdan and Woods were presented as an entirely new senior management team. It is unprecedented at any Fortune 500 company that an entire board is replaced in one go so I have no idea why anybody thought we would be successful in our historic transition from Ferguson to new manager.
I admired Brendon Rodgers for the amount of time he invested in his early months in learning about Liverpool's traditions and history and that he went out of way to emotionally connect with the fan base in the local area. Moyes has not cultivated the same relationships in Manchester. And of course his record in the transfer market spending €75m but delivering no impact at all to the team has been a disaster.
The job was very easy:
1) Initially to allow SAFs coaches to run the 1st team, as was, for the first few months and simply observe and absorb the clubs methods.
2) Use existing club intelligence to immediately recruit a suitably classy central midfield ball winner and perhaps a left back.
3) Use the first months to build relationships with senior players and staff, meet senior and influential supporters and stakeholders within Manchester and get to Christmas in the top 4 of the table and still in the cups.
Only after about 100 days should he start thinking about implementing any new ideas he has, but even then, it needed to be in a coherent manner. He was given a 6 year contract … Moyes had plenty of time to go about his work in a planned and systematic manner and so not change things that were working perfectly fine.
None of this is rocket science …. Managing the first 100 days of any new senior appointment is a well established path which all seasoned professionals are aware of. But it seems Moyes was hell bent of being Mr Hard Man, he wanted to hit the ground running and prove he was his own man and he ripped out the heart of the club. I wonder if SAF knew that his protégé and friend would so brazenly disregard every principle he has established at his beloved club and more than that how he felt while he watched the kingdom built by him fall like a house of cards.
Moyes tried to fix problems that did not exist, ignored issues that have been plainly obvious and seemingly had very little respect for the amazing work done at the club in years gone past. Press leaks like SAF's footballing operation being years behind the modern world, that our squad was simply not good enough, that the team required enormous restructuring were all made to help cover up his own limitations and capability in the job. It’s been the white elephant in the room for too long.
Simply put, Moyes was not the man for the job, and the club has suffered a heavy penalty in trying to make that decision work.
The writer is a freelance contributor