David Moyes appreciation thread.

[lovecity8utd]

My favourite memory of Davey was the post match interview after we had beaten them at the swamp and he admitted that we were e team that the scum should aspire to be. Couldn't have been better scripted if it had been written by our pr department.

So long Davey, I will miss you.

[sheblue]

Gone but not forgotten. A very sad day.

[Hutch's Shoulder]

If ever a man deserved a 10m payoff .....

[michaelcityfan]

A wonderful manager probably best ever rag manager, wonder if they'll go for Pulis now.

[Twobob]

Statue of him outside the ground - will at least scare the gypo's away! ;-)

[Chopper]

Dear David,

As my tears flow I write this letter to you with deepest support and thanks for your efforts. I find quite sad the behavior of your former employers. They groomed you and thrust you into the spotlight with no regard for your future or well being. You revolutionized the training world when you added the ipads and secured 2 world class players at a great rate and successfully negotiated a new contract for your unsettled star player. How did they repay your love? With treachery, just like your former employers. Promising you time support and money yet giving you nothing in abundance. You will rise above and face those snakes again Davey mark my words and you will get three points(or a draw) every time. If you need anything let me know. And remember.........

[youtube]Tr97MQiqW38[/youtube]

[Pretty Boy Lee]

First time Everton, Manchester City and Liverpool have beaten United home & away since Premier League's inception First time Everton have beaten United home and away since 1969-70 First time Everton & Liverpool have ever done a league double over United in the same season First time Man City & Liverpool have beaten United home & away since Premier League's inception First time United conceded a first-minute goal in the Premier League (Edin Dzeko for Manchester City) United are guaranteed to finish the season with their lowest ever Premier League points tally United fail to qualify for the Champions League for the first time since 1995 United's worst home league form for over a decade Suffered three defeats in a row for the first time since 2001 this season Eliminated in the FA Cup third round - something which happened just once under Ferguson First ever home defeat to Swansea this term First home defeat to Newcastle since 1972 First home defeat to West Brom since 1978 First league defeat to Stoke since 1984 Love you David!

Stolen

[dick dastardley]

Jurgen klopp has ruled himself out of the swamp job, but says his brother klipperty is very interested!!!

[sheikh it all about]

Jurgen klopp has ruled himself out of the swamp job, but says his brother klipperty is very interested!!!

It got one or two titters on Bluemoon yesterday so must be worth a try on here.

[michaelcityfan]

I'm devastated a great man like that cast aside. Ill miss his incompetence and lack of tactical ability. Wonder where he will end up perhaps at Palace after the scum sign Pulis!! Still I hear they are donating the banner to the museum of football. Pity I thought we could rescue it and put in our stadium as a memorial to this the greatest of scum managers.
Cant wait for the "welsh wizard" (Merlin I assume they mean) to manage for the rest of the season no doubt starting by instilling some family values and integrity into the team.

I hope they get themselves another manager of the same ability as Moyes. They truly deserve one.

[john@staustell]

I'm already working on agent Van Gaal.

Last time he left Barcelona they were 3 places off the relegation zone!

[Original Dub]

I'm already working on agent Van Gaal.

Last time he left Barcelona they were 3 places off the relegation zone!

Exactly!

[nottsblue]

Louis van Gaal I would not be worried out.

Ancelotti however is a different matter. They would challenge fir league next year imo if he went there

[RodneyRodney]

I'm already working on agent Van Gaal.

Last time he left Barcelona they were 3 places off the relegation zone!

Some of the management selection committee already expressing concern about Van Gaal. . .

[RodneyRodney]

Frank Farina's available.
And David , there's a job open at Sydney FC.

[Clowncrete]

Louis van Gaal I would not be worried out.

Ancelotti however is a different matter. They would challenge fir league next year imo if he went there

Ancellotti's league record isn't particularly good. He had a brilliant AC Milan team and only won it once in 5-6 years, even if you count out that Calciopoli years when they had their points deducted. Chelsea had a complete meltdown in their second season. Madrid can still end up without the league and CL.

[Tony P]

Joking aside, this is an excellent piece of journalism from Barney Ronay:

Farewell, then, David Moyes. You made some mistakes as Manchester United manager. But none of them, let's face it, as gapingly inept as the decision to appoint you Manchester United manager in the first place.

It would be nice to conclude that United's 20th permanent manager burned brightly during his 10-month succession, that he flew too close to the sun, that this grand old romantic beast of a corporate super-club simply was not ready for the radical re-imaginings of all-out Moyes-ism. But it would also be untrue.

In the end Moyes's greatest failing during the last 10 months was simply to walk into Old Trafford and act like David Moyes, the same David Moyes his previous managerial career had always suggested him to be: a hard-working 50-year-old with obvious virtues but with a limited palette of skills when judged against the very best.

Perhaps Moyes could have learned more quickly on the job, revealed previously unseen elite-level tactical refinement, or had the courage to junk and rebuild from the start a jaded squad. That he didn't do any of this can hardly be a surprise, though. He did his best. He stayed true to himself. But from the start neither of these were ever likely to be enough.

A great deal of brain-mangling speculation will now be expended on where United go from here, but what Moyes does next is a question of some interest too, not just for Moyes himself, but also in the wider story of United's ongoing post-Ferguson macro-shambles. It is important to absorb exactly what Moyes has been subjected to here. A genuinely vertiginous descent from Chosen One to shortest-serving managerial sacking in United's 122-year history. Moyes is just the sixth United manager ever to be sacked. Leaving aside for now the 10-year churn of the post-Busby void Moyes is only the third genuine sacking after Ron Atkinson and John Chapman, who was suspended by the FA for "improper conduct" in 1926.

It is rare territory indeed for man who was prior to leaving Everton the second longest serving manager in the Premier League. If it is hard to see what he might do next then this is perhaps because there are so few precedents for this kind of slow-burn managerial Icarus-act. The ever-generous Carlo Ancelotti has already suggested Moyes will have "another club, another opportunity" before long and that this is all just the lot of the football manager, whose very existence was partly founded out of the need to have a high-profile patsy to fire when things went wrong.

But is it really? This feels like something beyond the ordinary. It has instead been a mega-sacking: pernicious, degrading, gruellingly voyeuristic, even at times a little nasty. The spectacle of Moyes on the touchline in those final weeks was painful and ever-present: a raw, wild-eyed figure lost on his blasted heath, pelted with hailstones, twitching and fretting and continually whirling around in confusion like a man menaced by a cloud of invisible bats.

The Moyes brand – and these things matter in the job market – has been disastrously smudged. There is a slight danger now of following the Graham Taylor dynamic, an excellent man and fine manager who became forever associated with his own moment of high-end public failure. Moyes at United was never quite headline turnip territory, but it has been more insidious. There has never really been a rolling-news-era football failure on this scale, each real-time black eye processed and chewed up by social media, with its daily Moyes-out statistical briefings, its brilliant rolling propaganda tech; and beyond this the unceasing artillery range harangue of the professional pundit class. It is much more than simply a sacking Moyes will need to recover from.

It has been suggested that, like Roy Hodgson and André Villas-Boas, Moyes is sure to get another chance at a similar level, but there is no real like for like Moyes comparison here. Hodgson had managed Internazionale and taken Switzerland to a World Cup before he went to Liverpool. Villas-Boas was still young and progressive-looking post-Chelsea, a skinny-tied harbinger of the new world. Moyes is simply Moyes, for whom the reservations of his Everton days remain, chiefly a failure to beat the better teams and a certain style of square-headed linear football.

Another job at a club in or close to the Champions League would require a second leap of faith given his failings at United: the peculiar big-money signings of Marouane Fellaini and Juan Mata, neither of whom addressed United's basic lack of mobility in midfield; plus also the lack of genuine, egomaniacal big league presence on the touchline, the lack of style to suit the club.

With this in mind it seems likely Moyes has two immediate options. First an Everton-level job in England. Perhaps he could revive Aston Villa, or provide a Pardew-upgrade at Newcastle. West Ham fans would surely take him. Much better, he could simply go abroad. Let's face it the high point of Moyes' dead-headed season came in the Champions League where United briefly led Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals.

And while there will be sniggers from those picturing the Moyes-led destruction of the Bundesliga youth system, or a junking of the practice balls at the Ajax academy in favour of vomit-soaked bleep tests, a spell at a German, Dutch or Italian club could provide some vital rejuvenation. Just as Bobby Robson flowered into an adaptable, sometimes incoherent European football eminence post-England; or more pertinent, as Steve McClaren rebuilt both his methods and basic sense of himself in Holland.

Either way, it is a process to be managed carefully. Almost every member of United's post-Busby and pre-Ferguson platoon of pressed-men and fill-ins ended up looking frazzled by the experience. Wilf McGuiness opted for a sun-kissed dictator-era retreat to Greek football with Aris Thessaloniki and Panachaiki. Frank O'Farrell resurfaced with Cardiff City and the Iranian national team. Tommy Docherty was in Australia within two years of leaving United. Atkinson, bolstered by a couple of FA Cups and a winning personality, went back to his old club West Bromwich Albion, an option Moyes might be best not chasing up at the moment.

Plus, of course, what Moyes does next has its own wider fascinations. It is hard not to hope he flourishes on a more fitting stage. If only to highlight the fact that those who appointed him are still in situ and that, frankly, Moyes himself looks a little like a victim in this bodged high-end succession, and a footnote in a wider story of institutional confusion that may have some time to run yet.

[Ezz]

We should club together and take out a full page ad in the MEN thanking him for his time at the club and that we will never forget him.

[Hutch's Shoulder]

Next Scotland manager

[zuricity]

Next Scotland manager

I'm not sure you are getting the hang of this. The idea is that he goes to top clubs and brings 'em down . Like Hughes does.

Next team for me ? Barcelona.