Even before David Moyes had walked into the Old Trafford
press room for his first media call as the new Manchester United manager, the
press was looking for the slightest chink in his armor to exploit. Three months
and ten official matches on, it has been a massacre for the former Everton
manager with the media, fans, critics and oppositions up in arms against the 50
year old Scotsman, already calling for the Old Trafford decision makers to give
him the sack.
But honestly, there was only little that Moyes could do. Sir
Alex Ferguson, with years of experience behind him, had probably looked at the
growing competition in the league and decided to bail on United at the end of
last season.
In the words of Manchester United legend Lou Macari, “He’s
always been a good judge of everything. When he shocked everyone and said he
was retiring, I thought, ‘is he aware of what’s around the corner, is he taking
the view that one or two of his best players are coming to an end’?”
Macari is not the only one. Many ardent United fans believe
their beloved Fergie has let the club down when he walked away, leaving the
club in a disorganized and frenzied stated. “It was important to me to leave an
organization in the strongest possible shape and I believe I have done so. The
quality of this league winning squad, and the balance of ages within it, bodes
well for continued success at the highest level.”
Early evidence suggests quite the contrary five months from
that famous proclamation. United have made their worst league start in 24 years
and although they have done reasonably well in the UEFA Champions League with a
win at home and a draw at tricky Shakhtar Donetsk, Moyes runs the risk of
further resentment from the fans if the club fails to get a result against
Sunderland this weekend.
A narrow defeat to Liverpool was followed by a humiliating
defeat at the hands of fierce rivals Manchester City and West Bromwich Albion
completed the worst month possible for the club with a shock 2-1 win at Old
Trafford, their first since 1978 and one that they truly deserved.
During his last lap at the Theatre of Dreams, the Great Scot
was the club’s greatest strength as well as its biggest liability. He was
probably the one man who could have taken last season’s side and made them into
champions, with four matches to go as well. Having not signed a playmaker in
the last five years, following the Glazer’s family’s very public and poisonous
takeover of the club, Ferguson managed to win five Premier League titles, a
European Cup, three League Cups and the FIFA Club World Cup in his last eight
years.
His opinion also holds significant weight among the club’s
fans as well. When the Glazer family was in talks to take over the club,
everyone thought the Socialist and trade unionist in Sir Alex will speak out
against the heavily leveraged buyout of the club, just like he did previously
when Sky and then Rupert Murdoch showed interest in buying the club. Even David
Gill, who had been a Managing Director and then the Chief Executive at Old
Trafford before leaving his post this year, had famously commented “Debt is the
road to ruin for football clubs”. Eight years on, Gill has resigned from his
post as CEO and is now a member of the club’s board. His final pay package from
the club came in at a staggering £
1.8 million, a massive 60% increase from what it had been prior to the Glazers
era. He is also one of the most vocal supporters of the American tycoons. Such
an irony!
Sir Alex, meanwhile, never spoke out against the Glazers
burdening the club with a humungous £ 716 million debt, hugely limiting the
club’s chances of competing in the transfer market against the likes of City,
Chelsea, Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain, clubs financed by filthy rich sugar
daddies.
In a bond issue a couple of years back, the family raised
more than £ 500 million to pay down certain preference bank debt. But the bond
also enables the family to remove more than £ 565 million in interest,
dividends and management fees from the club by 2017. Sir Alex kept quiet in
spite of all that, in spite of numerous protests and demonstrations from
supporters’ groups.
And in an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS in America this
week, he had this to say about the Glazers: “There is a misconception about the
Glazers buying the club. It created hostility and different factions but you
forget, the minute it became a PLC someone was going to buy it. The Glazers did
buy it. And in my time with them - they were nothing but supportive - very
strong, single-minded people but always supportive of the manager and the
things that happen in the club. I've absolutely no hesitation in supporting the
way they're going about the job - very low key.”
His silence shocked the United faithful. But success on the
pitch ensured they had nothing to complain about. But he has since retired,
leaving United in a far worse shape than he pointed it out to be. It has been
mentioned that had United not suffered THAT last minute heartbreak when City
won the league in 2012, he would have retired and Moyes would have come in to
replace him a year earlier.
But Sergio Agüero spoiled those plans and United fans will
be thanking their lucky stars that he did because it forced Ferguson’s hand and
he splashed out the cash on Robin van Persie. In the Dutchman, Ferguson stole a
march on City and no player has so comprehensively decided the outcome of a
Premier League win.
But what about the rest of the lot? “We'll have to rely on
the bunch of idiots who strolled the league last season,” remarked one fan
after never ending letdowns in pursuit of summer transfer targets. Truly,
United were the champions last season by default; they were the best team out
of a floundering lot.
That isn’t to say they didn’t deserve the title. Yes,
the widening gap between United and City at the end of the season wasn’t a
proper reflection of things. They ruthlessly seized the initiative whenever
their neighbors dropped points, fuelled by the agony of Sergio Agüero's title
clincher in May 2012.
But a look at the team reveals how poor it actually is. For
a man like Sir Alex who has built at least six different championships winning
sides in his 27 years at the club, last season’s team can easily be the worst
he has had during that time. David Moyes bemoaned the lack of quality at the
club when he wrote off the team’s chances of winning the European Cup. United
are "five or six" short, according to Moyes, who has inherited a team
which won the league by 11 points as recently as April and reached the
Champions League final in 2011.
However, both those achievements went on to mask several
deficiencies at the club. Having failed to improve the squad year in and year
out, it was down to ingenuity of Ferguson that the Old Trafford faithful still
got to witness silverware success. In 2011, he won the league having signed
Javier Hernandez, Chris Smalling and the Portuguese vagrant Bebe.
The signing of van Persie was a mere papering over the
cracks by Fergie, whose hands were tied by the iron clad Glazer family. It’s
not that United do not have the cash; they do. The club’s aggressive marketing
policy has raked in millions of pounds in the last few seasons, their new shirt
sponsorship deal with Chevrolet alone is worth a staggering £ 357 million over seven years.
That almost twice as much as Arsenal draws from Emirates Airlines and more than
Liverpool’s deal with Standard Chartered or Chelsea’s endorsement of Samsung.
But most of the money goes to pay off the huge debts that
the Glazers have burdened the club with and their recent IPO in the New York
Stock Exchange did little to boost the chances of the new manager getting big
name players.
When Moyes took over, the media went into a standstill.
Various papers reported the Glazers would go all out and bring in a marquee
signing to kick of the new era. They failed miserably at that. They were
snubbed by as many as five world class midfield players merely because the
Glazers didn’t want to pay the apparently ‘inflated’ transfer fees. And the
result has showed on the pitch as United have struggled to cope with pressing
football from the opposition and have been found grasping at straws in midfield
where the only quality players they have are Michael Carrick and Shinji Kagawa.
Moyes should never have been given the chance to manage the
current squad of players ahead of a winner like Jurgen Klopp and maybe even
Jose Mourinho but he can’t be faulted for the club’s recent downward spiral. The
Nemanja Vidic – Rio Ferdinand pairing is slowly moving towards the end of its
time, Patrice Evra remains a defensive liability, Michael Carrick, so reliable and
the arguably the club’s best performer after van Persie last season, is
suffering from poor form and the alternatives the club has are not that impressive
either.
The main problem United has is not their lack of world class
players, but quality players. The likes of Anderson, Ashley Young, Tom
Cleverley, Danny Welbeck, Anders Lindegaard, Antonio Valencia, and Alexander Büttner
would find it tough to get into any mediocre team in the Premier League but
such has been dearth of competition at the club that they are more than
guaranteed playing time.
Ferguson had become too sentimental towards the end of his
time at United and it was a very chastening result that compelled him to act. Ironically,
it was a victory but the manner in which the Red Devils defeated non-league
Crawley Town 1-0 back in 2011 that forced his hand. Wes Brown and John O’Shea
left for Sunderland, Darron Gibson was signed by David Moyes at Everton and Gabriel
Obertan was sold to Newcastle United. Bebe, currently in his third loan spell
away from United has not played for the club since and perhaps, never will.
The United of yesteryears would not have tolerated Anderson’s
poor contribution to the side while being allowed to collect four Premier
League winners’ medals, or the inability of Antonio Valencia to cross the
football into the ‘danger area’ or signed someone like Büttner let alone give
him a game. Southampton passed up the opportunity to sign the Dutchman as they
deemed the £ 2 million
transfer fee too high. United paid Vitesse Arnhem £ 4 million for him.
Moyes wanted to
freshen the squad up. He wanted a quality left back and two proper attacking
midfielders. He ended up signing Marouane Fellaini from Everton on transfer
deadline day – the fourth or maybe fifth choice in his list, and that too, for £ 4 million more than they could
have paid. United’s new chief executive Edward Woodward gave an interview to
the United fans’ magazine United We Stand
last week and his excuses make for a fascinating reading.
What is inexcusable on the part of Moyes is he is still
getting to know his players. He managed Everton for 11 straight years and
barely a single week passed without the Scotsman being seen at opposition
games, sizing up their threats. Javier Hernandez, United’s top goal scorer last
season after Robin van Persie who was very wrongly left out of the team for the
4-1 humiliation at the Etihad had popped up with the winner against his Everton
side on two occasions and was only given his first outing in the Capital One
Cup win against Liverpool, where again, he proved to be the match winner.
Now, with the club on the brink of three defeats in
succession in the league for the first time since 2001, Moyes has pretty much written
off the fans’ expectations. The club had effectively done that when they handed
the Scotsman a six year deal at United. But now, Moyes has passed the buck on
to Sir Alex Ferguson and admitted that he doesn’t believe the current squad of
players is good enough to continue the long legacy of success under his mentor
and has effectively criticized the great man for the team he inherited.
NOTE: The author is a Manchester United fan and has been so
since the 1997/98 season when his father would wake him in the middle of the
night to watch his then favorite player David Beckham in action. He has witnessed
the magical night at the Camp Nou in 1999 when riled on by Ferguson, United
secured a glorious victory in the European Cup and the fans’ joy at stadium were
echoed in a spontaneous celebratory dance of son and father over in Calcutta. Over
the years, United has become a passion for him and Sir Alex’s silence and later
approval over the Glazers’ reign has left him in shock like many other fans. But
he still believes Moyes is the man for the job because, well, Sir Alex is
almost never wrong and hopes the club will come good in the future once again.
It’s all about BELIEF!!! 1958, 1968, 1999, 2008 taught him
that!!!
DISCLAIMER: This article has been written by a member of the FootballWorld fraternity and represents the personal views of the writer and not of footballworld.co.in.
Posted by Subham Mitra on behalf of FootballWorld.
