"Are Everton in today?"

[Louis]

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/premierleague/article4069309.ece

 

At the Manchester United training ground in recent months, some of the long-serving staff would come in and ask, with lips curled, Are Everton in today? It was a coded way of asking if the boss was in his office. David Moyes never did escape the disparaging label that he was an overpromoted Everton manager out of his depth from the day he walked, with trepidation, into Old Trafford.

 

Are Everton in today? It is an easy, sneering insult given that Moyes came from Goodison Park with ten staff, from assistants to scouts, analysts and soon added a £27 million midfielder.

 

Easy but misleading. Moyes did not turn United into Everton during his inglorious reign that has been dead for weeks, bar the contractual formalities. It has been far worse than that.

 

Everton had personality, underdog spirit. They overachieved. They had method. United have had nothing, just an alarming decline and no guarantees that they had hit bottom under Moyes's management.

It's an extract from an article today mostly about Moyes' exit. What do you make of it?

[Romey 1878]

Sick to fucking death of being told we overachieved. Overachieving is when you have one outstanding season out of the fucking blue. We did it consistently, which means we achieved what we should have.

 

Moyes didn't arrive from some shitty little club.

[StevO]

Well if they ask that question today, we all know the answer!

[efc1111]

Insulting and arrogant, but that's not surprising from that club. At least they've had to eat some humble pie this season, and that squad still needs major rebuilding so I think they're in for another tricky season, whoever they appoint as manager.

[NYBlue]

It's illustrative of the arrogance that has developed at the core of the club. It matters not, while trying to be funny someone should tell them that they paid a visit to the real Everton over the weekend and it wasn't pretty. The handling of the whole episode is a PR disaster.

 

It's very easy to take the high and mighty attitude after winning for such a long time. When it goes the shape of a pear then you see how a club really handles itself. The rot has set in now and I think the only person who could fix it would be Klopp. Since he has ruled himself out they're deep right in it up to their necks.

 

As for Moyes I guess he knows now that the grass isn't always greener. In a few years I wonder if he'll look back at the United episode and the reaction he gets from Everton fans and wonder if it was worth the disparaging remarks because ultimately United didn't stand by their man. What they did was string him up in the town square with a poster mentioning that the execution was postponed until the next day.

[Lowensda]

 

Their squad needs a complete rebuild and if the new manager get's it wrong then that's their status in European and English football gone for 10 + years.

 

 

 

 

It's been needed for years and I still say that's why Ferguson retired, because he knew that the team weren't going to last much longer, so he needed someone, who he believed, could build a team. Ferguson even made a speech about sticking by the new manager, blatantly because he knew this would happen.

 

Ferguson is as much to blame as anyone. Moyes just didn't help himself.

[Memmaclub]

For what's it's worth I think Moyes' lack of tactical nouse shone through. He was never the right man but in truth we got RM so who cares

[Hafnia]

don't get all this rebuild nonsense - the squad needed adding to certainly but not rebuilding.

 

Moyes needed to integrate himself to the set up, not take it apart and create a them and us culture, ultimately thats what he did.

 

I think he thought he was buying Giggs loyalty by making him coach - Giggs doesn't do loyalty ask his wife and his brother.

 

My guess as to the trouble causers would be Rio (main one), Carrick, Wellbeck, Vidic, Nani... Rooney will have been running with the foxes and the hounds.

[Cornish Steve]

Maybe we should start our own code. When a game is perceived to be against very easy opposition, we should ask "Are we playing United today?"

[msloan78]

I seem to remember a "grass isn't always greener" quote from Moyes, after Pienaar had left and then come back.

 

Read earlier that this has been on the cards for a while but they were waiting until CL was definitely off the menu as United had inserted a clause into his contract limiting any pay off. Looks like he's only entitled to 1 years salary (£5,000,000) as opposed to the full payoff if they had qualified for CL.

[MC11]

Personally I think the dithering cost him.

 

Summer transfer window was there for him to bring in some big names. He dithered and ultimately it cost him.

[efc1111]

I seem to remember a "grass isn't always greener" quote from Moyes, after Pienaar had left and then come back.

 

 

 

Yes, he said that when Pienaar was running down his contract and looked certain to leave.

 

The quote that has come back to bite him most often in recent days is "If anybody wanted to leave, they'd be poorer for it. Most people that have left here, it's not tended to work out for them."

 

How right he was.

[NYBlue]

Personally I think the dithering cost him.

 

Summer transfer window was there for him to bring in some big names. He dithered and ultimately it cost him.

 

Which comes from a lack of conviction and adaptability.

 

I remember when he was running down his contract that he said he fancied managing in the German league. That certainly won't be happening now. He'll likely take a break, possibly be a pundit at the World Cup, get another job at a premier league sitting in mid table but he's always going to be viewed as the man that couldn't hack the job.

 

Bottled the big games and bottled the United job.

Edited April 22, 2014 by NYBlue

[Kant]

Perfectly suited for Newcastle United, maybe they stop buying french players under the management of David Moyes.

 

He looked clueless since he claimed he wanted to sign Fabregas and the guy answered in a press conference he did not want to leave (and even less to United, due to his appreciation for Arsenal and Wenger). Then the fake-lawyers episode with Ander Herrera, only to end up overpaying four million for a substitute midfielder. He looked like he was the manager of a recently promoted team with loads of cash available.

 

But I feel what killed him was his attitude every time he spoke to the media. He felt Manchester United were the underdog every single time. Sentences like "We will try to win every game from now on","I don't know what we have to do to win. We played well today.", and my favourite "Liverpool's league position suggests they're ahead of us. They possibly do come here as favourites."

 

If I was a Man Utd fan, I'd never want to hear those words from the manager.

[Matt]

Personally I think the dithering cost him.

 

Summer transfer window was there for him to bring in some big names. He dithered and ultimately it cost him.

Moyes wasnt the person doing the negotiations though, he will have given his list of targets to the new guy (Woodward?) who had no experience in negotiating deals.

 

Moyes ultimately shot himself in the foot repeatedly, to the extent he didnt have a leg to stand on, with his negative talking, but its ultimately the board who should take the blame. They didnt back him in the transfer markets, so he was stuck with a bunch of overpaid inflated egos and never had a chance to set up the team in his image.