LAST season Manchester United won the League by 11 points. This term they will struggle to finish in the top six. But, according to many United fans and his media cheerleaders, manager David Moyes should be given more time.
As somebody who does not support Man U and would quite like to see them languishing in mid-table for the sake of variety, I hope he gets all the time he needs to finish the job.
Straight up, Moyes is doing a poor job at Old Trafford. The excuses that he wasn’t backed with funds in the summer and inherited a creaking squad do not mitigate what is fast becoming a calamitous season by United’s standards.
The rules of top-level football management are clear and simple. You have to be good, and you have to be good from the start. If you’re not good you get sacked.
On the plus side, you get paid a salary that is a dizzying multiple of the average wage. And when you get canned to the sound of protests from your fellow managers up and down the land you get a colossal pay-off, quickly followed by another job at a club of slightly lesser standing.
It’s not a bad life really.
Transition seasons and five-year plans exist only in the minds of managers as concepts to buy them a bit more time.
If Moyes wasn’t backed in the summer, then that’s his problem. He should have either made them back him by hook or crook or else found out at the interview stage that there was no cash and therefore refused the job.
Even if he wasn’t given money to strengthen, there is simply no excuse for a team that won the Premier League at a canter in 2012/13 to be out of the race at the mid-way point next time around.
Moyes never won a trophy at Everton. He will likely finish the season having never won anything at Manchester United. The club have gone backwards at an alarming/amusing (take your pick) pace since he took over from Alex Ferguson.
Meanwhile, his old club Everton are doing better and are a whole lot more entertaining to watch under his successor Roberto Martinez than they were under Mr British Manager.
If Martinez had overseen a similar collapse at Everton do you think the British media would be so forgiving? I don’t.
Instead the cult of Moyes has it that the real reason Everton are now thriving is because the Scot left them in such robust health. This guy can’t lose. Unlike his team.
