Knives out for Moyes for some time
Quotes ping back to London and make the sports pages: “Steady as she goes,” we’re told. A small tempest in Athens is nothing United can’t handle. But one or two illustrious guests who manage to grab a private word with the old man report something more nuanced — a man talking about the possibility that it might not work out after all, and that he would be prepared to do all he could to help remedy a situation for which he bore so much responsibility.
Scene: flashback, Old Trafford, May, 2013. Manchester United formally announce David Moyes’ appointment. The club’s statement carefully highlights Sir Alex’s role in the decision: it is his recommendation, to which the board have assented. Amidst all the emotion and hyperbole accompanying Fergie’s shock retirement, brave are the few who dare question the wisdom of allowing a manager to all but impose his choice as successor. Out in Lisbon, there are howls of rage from José Mourinho’s agent. Few hear them, and even fewer report them. For now, at least.
Anyone who was in Athens on that dark and terrible February night will have no trouble understanding why Fergie might have seemed increasingly troubled during the weeks that followed. Something snapped that night, and journalists returning on the official club trip privately reported an apparent sea change amongst the suits of Manchester United. For the first time, all of us who count ourselves as ‘camp followers’ of the MUFC circus began to think seriously about a post-Moyes world; tellingly, it was at this moment we began to hear the first whispers about intermediaries taking soundings amongst Louis Van Gaal’s people.
There was something else, too: the surfacing of the dreaded phrase “losing the dressing room”. Some fans felt it in their bones that night in Athens — that this hadn’t just been a case of poor performance and management, but that the players did not seem as wholly committed to the cause as one would demand. There had been grumblings as far back as October, to be fair. One operative in Manchester who works for some United players had become notorious for his ring-arounds, spilling poison about Moyes into hacks’ ears on a weekly basis.
In my own files, I have a list of players whose ‘camps’ have been the source of tips which stuck the boot into the Moyes régime: it is a long list. Especially when compared to my other list, that of players’ representatives going out of their way to support the boss: Rooney and Mata. Complain all you like about spoilt millionaires getting above themselves and needing a smack — and we fans have done that, of course — but the fact remains that this is a balance of opinion which spells only doom.
You can’t fool pros. Opposition players knew the score too. Such as Newcastle players to a fanzine after the January match: “They couldn’t believe how easy it was. They didn’t expect United to be so bad. And that the last ten minute bombardment would never come.” Or West Brom’s, to another fanzine: “Our players weren’t impressed by United. One of them said games against United were always physically hard, as they would ‘relentlessly work you to death.’ He said this United team struck him as lazy, looking to rely on moments of individual brilliance.” And such moments have been few and far between.
Worse was soon to come. Did Moyes ask United whether they wanted him to offer his resignation after the cataclysmic Liverpool defeat in March? So runs the story offered to me by one impeccable source, very close to Moyes since the late Nineties. Yes, this might’ve been one of those ‘political’ offers, of the kind that one expects not to be accepted, especially before the do-or-die Olympiakos second leg days later. But it would show he understood how bad the situation was.
Fergie would’ve understood too. He was directly abused by fans at Old Trafford after both the Liverpool and Manchester City defeats, with a fanzine poll reported in The Daily Mirror finding that 40% of fans blamed him for United’s plight. The surprisingly high score was explained by two blameworthy factors: One, that he had imposed Moyes without a tender; and two, that he had left an ageing and mediocrity-studded squad as his legacy. Not to mention the wider point that his legacy also included part of the blame for the 2005 takeover, and all that consequently followed.
Fergie now faced the prospect of every Moyes setback being blamed on him as well as on Poor David, thereby further tarnishing his reputation with each defeat.
Support had been trickling away from Moyes since late autumn but now it was starting to flood, once Champions League hopes disappeared for both this season and next. By April 12th, my sources very close to Fergie were sounding bitter and defeated, resigned to the increasing likelihood his protégé would not get to spend the summer war chest after all. On the 14th, Giggs camp sources reported Ed Woodward had started actively considering possible replacements, whilst Fergie and Bobby Charlton allegedly fought a last rearguard action. Charlton in particular had been adamant the previous May that José Mourinho would not be allowed inside Old Trafford’s dressing room — he, too, will have been politically diminished by what has since happened. By the 16th, at least one player seemed to have been told Moyes’ fate had been sealed; by the eve of the Everton game, the squad were on the brink of open dissent, with Welbeck and Nani amongst those refusing to conceal their feelings.
That Sunday night after Goodison now takes its place in the darker pages of United’s folklore, alongside Crystal Palace 1972 or Southampton 1986. Moyes’ defenders amongst the fans were finally overrun, after months of honourably holding firm. By common consent, the match-going fans are perhaps the only part of the United eco-system to have emerged from this sorry saga with any credit. And in a rare moment of communal understanding, the club’s directors appeared to grasp what had happened, and signed the death warrant.
Back in December 1972, Frank O’Farrell quipped “it’s a nice day for an execution” as he set off to his termination meeting. His career and reputation never recovered from the crushing blow, and perhaps Moyes now risks the same fate. Two decent and honourable men, 40 years distant, facing the same abyss: Frank would then behave with a great and discreet dignity, and one hopes David will do the same. Whether United and their players deserve that consideration or not is another matter entirely.
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