Moyes is a good Manager, but the job is too big too soon. When SAF took over Man U the team wasn't the global brand they are now. They weren't winning titles, they were doing okay in the cups. SAF came to a team that almost got sold for £24 Million. Fergie came to the club a proven winner, who had won titles, cups and a European Trophy managing a team from an unfashionable oil city in the North of Scotland. He built a team on a fraction of the budget of the old firm, that beat them regularly and comfortably. That won't happen again ever. So, when Fergie came to Man U, people in England might not have known how good he was, But Fergie new and doubtless the people who hired him had a fair idea of what they were getting. But the fact is, he joined a relatively unsuccessful team. And he arrived as a proven winner who had build a multiple trophy winning side. I think that counts for a lot. He had time to build a team in his image, with expectations that are so much less than the expectations places on Moyes, who took over an institution, an industry, a club that for the last 20 or so years dominated football in England and bagged a couple of Champion's League trophies.
The point being...all those years ago...Man U needed a Fergie and they got him. What Man U needed at the end of last year was not a man who had built a competitive team on a relatively small budget but had not won a fuckin thing. Moyes might represent continuity, a long term appointment, but what's more important for Man U now, like it is for every big team is stability. Man U have lost stability and it's costly. The team doesn't perform, results don't go well, the share prices drop, the club loses and has lost value. it's never been harder to get into the Champion's League spots. Man U can't afford to miss out two years in a row.
Most football fans knew that Man U's squad last year was in need of a major overhaul. Moyes comes in relatively late in the off season. The Chief executive has just left and he hasn't long to add to the squad and because he is David Moyes he doesn't have the same clout within his own organisation and out there in the transfer market. he won't get the same Money SAF got and he won't get he same money a name (proven manager) would get. SO he's hampered from the start. man U are not a team that splashes out in the January window and that goes against him too.
Moyes being Moyes he was on a hiding to nothing. It was a bad appointment, things being as they are and have panned out. Moyes clearly is not a man that can get someone else's players to over perform for him, which is what he has had to do. Course SAF would get more from these players, they are his boys. They loved him, as well they might, he was a proven winner, a legend, he was the club. There's maybe half a dozen managers out there that have the gift of getting players to over perform and play for the manager at the drop of a hat. Maybe less than six.
Man U should have gotten hold of a name manager, a guy who could keep the ship afloat for a couple of years, make some big signings...keep the team in the champion's League spots, before making way for the long term appointment. It takes years to replace a man like SAF, i mean he's irreplaceable, but you need to replace him. So Man U should have taken years not months, should have thought short term in the first instance in the name of stability...then taken time to seek out their long term man. SAF got one thing wrong...his choice of Moyes. Fergie can't be blamed. He was judging Moyes the man he knew and the manager he knew...but he should have thought about the man who was going to take over one of the biggest sporting franchises in the world and inheriting an ailing squad that needed urgent replacements that was used to winning things. That man could never be David Moyes.
