David Moyes has officially been sacked from Manchester United football club after only ten months. On 22nd April 8:30am the Manchester United official twitter feed announced that Moyes would be leaving the club saying, “the club would like to place on record its thanks for the hard work, honesty and integrity he brought to the role”. Due to the bad season United have had this did not come as a surprise to many. Personally, I feel sorry for him as he built up a solid ten year reputation at Everton football club and he finally makes it as manager to a ‘top’ club and then is sacked. This has debatably ruined his reputation, and has definitely tainted it. However it is fair to say that anybody following the footsteps of Sir Alex Ferguson (who managed United for an astounding twenty eight years) would struggle. Although Moyes was personally selected by Ferguson himself, he lost the vital support of United’s owners, the Glazer family. Simon Stone from BBC Sport said that, “the sacking of Moyes was inevitable after Sunday’s awful performance at Everton” where they lost 2-0.
It has been announced that former United player, Ryan Giggs will step in as acting manager for the last four games of the season. However whilst he has a vast knowledge of the club he has hardly any management experience whatsoever, so it will be interesting to see how the next few games pan out. Although because he has been managed by Ferguson he can draw upon advice he taught him as a player and use it for his managerial role.
There are many things the media have critiqued him on such as the dramatic fall in the league table for United. They have failed to qualify for the Champions League for the first time since 1995. They will end their season with their lowest points total in Premier League history, and their home record this season is the worst it has been since 1978. At present they are seventh in the Premier League with four matches still to play, however this time last year they were first with eleven points ahead. They have also lost six league games at home.
Another mistake he made was not playing the same team all season. There have not been two games where the players on the pitch have been the same. He has not given time for the players to gel together and work as a team. There is little desire and passion for them to win. Related to this is the fact that the players he has bought he has been playing out of position, such as playing Mata on the right wing. It has been debated that he is trying to implement the same style he used with Everton for ten years, turning United into a standard mid-table team. On the other hand, the current playing squad are arguably the weakest it has been for many years.
He has made some bad transfer decisions too. He bought Marouane Fellaini for twenty seven and a half million when if they had acted quicker, could have bought him for four million less. This made officials lack confidence in him, they had to be sure he was the right person to make these decisions. With the mistakes he has made thus far he cannot be trusted to make the 100-150 million investment decisions over the summer.
However in my opinion he has been unlucky and been treated too harshly. United have not had a new manager in twenty eight years so they should have let Moyes settle and have more time to gel with the players and adapt to his new role. It is unfortunate that has been sacked. But it was always inevitable that the manager after Ferguson would always have been compared to him. Overall he should have been given more of a chance to prove how good of a manager he is.
Sophie Chekruga 