Manchester United today announced David Moyes had been relieved of his duties as manager,
having concluded long before Sunday’s punishing defeat at Everton that
he cannot be trusted with the potential £150m war chest intended to meet
the club’s aim of reclaiming the Premier League title next season.
The
mathematical impossibility of United finishing in the top four this
season, following their 11th Premier League defeat of the season at
Goodison Park on Sunday, means that United need only give Moyes a
one-year pay-off under the terms of his five-year deal, rather than
honour the full four years left on that contract. Ryan Giggs could then
take over as caretaker manager for the final four games of the season
Initially,
it had been thought that the Scot's departure might be a graceful one
after United's Premier League season ends at Southampton on 11 May.
But
chief executive Ed Woodward has been urgently seeking to tie up transfer
business in Germany and Spain before the World Cup starts, in 52 days'
time. The prospect of securing players such as Southampton's Luke Shaw
and Bayern Munich's Toni Kroos would be even more challenging if United
were under the leadership of a lame-duck manager, as well as unable to
offering such recruits Champions League football next season.
Klopp is instinctively reluctant to break his contract at Dortmund but
United are understood to have approached him, with the Netherlands
manager Louis van Gaal also high on the list of possible replacements.
The process of sounding managers out may have under way for as long as
four weeks. The prospect of a return to Old Trafford for Laurent Blanc,
currently Paris Saint-Germain coach, cannot be ruled out. The job done
at Atletico Madrid by Diego Simeone also makes him another outside
contender. The idea of Moyes' successor at Everton, Roberto Martinez,
taking over the reins would be appealing to many, though that is thought
to be an unthinkable prospect for the Merseyside club.
United's need to move quickly is also born of the deep worries about
season-ticket renewals, with the narrative they are trying to establish
of leaping straight back into serious title contention after a ";once in
a lifetime" transition season being one that many supporters are just
not swallowing. By delaying on any action until 11 May, the club also
face a repeat of the problem they encountered last summer - attempting
to sign players from a standing start in June.
Though
Danny Welbeck became the first to let it be know, at the weekend, that
he is frustrated by his lack of opportunities at United, the manager's
reaction behind closed doors to the 2-0 defeat at Everton left others
convinced he is in a sense of denial at the club's problems. Moyes
arrived in the away dressing room to tell the players that they had
played well and had been unlucky - to the astonishment of experienced
players who always knew that Sir Alex Ferguson's public defence of them
would be followed by a private dressing down after such a dismal
performance.
The club also have the issue of a deeply disaffected
old guard to consider. The silence from Giggs in recent weeks - with the
exception of one very uneasy press conference appearance alongside
Moyes last month - creates the prospect of him simply drifting away from
Old Trafford at the end of next month. He has started only four games
this calendar year, the last of which saw his illustrious Champions
League career appear to end with an ignominious half-time substitution
against Bayern Munich. The presence at United of Giggs and his former
team-mate Paul Scholes - who is understood to have felt Moyes' attempts
to call on his experience extremely half-hearted - could potentially be a
major draw to prospective signings. Losing Giggs would be another break
with the past.
The Glazers arrive in Manchester at a time when they are under pressure
to make a first major decision relating to the club, at last. Having
enjoyed the luxury of Ferguson and former chief executive David Gill
running the club for them, they then allowed Ferguson to drive the
flawed decision about who should succeed him. He was initially adamant
that Moyes should be given the time that he was allowed, when Ferguson
took United through some very dark days in the late 1980s. But he seems
to have harboured personal misgivings about Moyes during a plummet which
has called into question Ferguson's own judgement.
Moyes is understood to have known after the desperate 3-0 home defeat
to Liverpool on 16 March that he was skating on extremely thin ice and
several sources suggest he might have made a half-hearted offer to quit
at that stage. But the board told him that they were willing to let him
tough things out.
It has been Moyes' misfortune that 2013-14 was
the season when bold, tactically ambitious managers like Martinez and
Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool have flourished, revealing literally how
far off the pace Moyes' football has been, and exposing his absence of a
core philosophy. Welbeck's pace - a quality United have lacked - has
been used just 13 times in the Premier League. Phil Jones has drifted
around the team, too often in a central midfield combination where his
lack of mobility has been exposed. There has also been a baffling
reluctance to use Adnan Januzaj. The 19-year-old has also started a mere
13 Premier League games despite causing consistent problems to
defences.
Though Moyes' fate was set by the Olympiakos defeat -
which Rooney said was United's worst European performance in his time -
the real concern came on 1 February when Moyes was able to deploy Rooney
and Robin van Persie together for the first time in three months and
also call upon new signing Juan Mata. United lost 2-1 at Stoke.
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