These are worrying times for Manchester United. Instead of scoring late goals on a routine basis, they are conceding them. There is no longer an aura surrounding the club and visiting teams come in expectation, rather than hope, of a good result. While the manager was not helped by the dithering of the board during the transfer window, the performances have simply not been good enough. He seems singularly unable to coax performances out of his players like Sir Alex Ferguson did.
The problem for Moyes is that he is not Ferguson. He has not been knighted for services to the game. He is not the most successful manager in the history of English football. He’s never even won a trophy. Still, if Ferguson picked him then the fans must stand behind their man and not lose faith as early as December. But why didn’t Moyes have a season working under Ferguson to ease the transition?
The stark contrast between the pair has been obvious from the start. First, the United boss claimed his side weren’t good enough to win the Champions League, then he suggested they won the league almost by default last season. Then, in the wake of a defeat at home to West Brom, less than a week after the 4-1 demolition at the Etihad, he said ”I’m concerned after today but there are a lot of games to go and we’ll try to put it right.”
Ferguson never used qualifiers like “try”. He was a born winner. Similarly, after the draw away at Cardiff, Moyes maintained he’d have taken that result before the game. That kind of talk does does not befit a United manager and is unlikely to endear him to the fans. Instead of all the “Moyes Out” nonsense propagated by a minority of morons on Twitter though, a more obvious solution might have been “Fergie In”.
It is certainly unprecedented in football to have a departing manager work with his replacement for a year but the whole nature of the succession was unprecedented. Such arrangements occur in big business all the time and Harvard Business School invited Ferguson to talk as a result of those very parallels.
Some might argue it would undermine Moyes’ position, but how? The players know (like everyone in football) that Ferguson was a bonafide genius and the new man could do well to learn from the old master. Moyes could conduct all the press conferences and possibly only utilise the experience of his mentor in league and Champions League ties.
The idea that United needed a clean break is a blatant fallacy, Why would one want a break from 20 years of virtually constant success? It’s all well and good Ferguson taking on a directing role but the supporters need to know he’s aiding his protege. There are any number of ways Moyes could have been eased into the job but he appears to have been thrown in at the deep end. It is too late for Ferguson to come to the rescue now because that will severely weaken the position of his successor. All the fans can do is wait. Wait and hope. Perhaps Ferguson will end up taking a far more active role behind the scenes than anyone had envisioned. It might just help salvage the club’s season.
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