London - There are plenty of reasons not to make David Moyes manager of Manchester United, and on Thursday we heard them all, tumbling out across the airwaves and forums.
He has never won a trophy or coached a team beyond the preliminary stages of the Champions League. He has not bought, or managed, a £30 million player. He does not know what it is like to chase the title in the final weeks of the season, or travel to Milan to defend a first-leg lead. Most of all, he is not Jose Mourinho.
Not being special is Moyes’s greatest crime. Mourinho arrives like a bad boy on the street corner, all leather and attitude, casually flicking a spark into a box of fireworks. Against his rock-and-roll image, Moyes is a nerd with a set of safety glasses and a long taper.
As manager of Everton his style has been effective, but often uninspiring. The season Blackpool were relegated they outscored Everton, who finished in seventh place. When Moyes took Everton into the Champions League from fourth place, bottom-of-the-table Southampton matched their 45 goals.
The Manchester United bequeathed by Sir Alex Ferguson was built on verve and attacking flair. ‘They always score,’ as Clive Tyldesley exclaimed going into injury time at the 1999 Champions League final. Everton don’t. In six of the last eight seasons, Everton’s position in a league table of Premier League goalscorers is inferior to their final league position. They were seventh in 2010-11, but 10 clubs scored more goals than them. They were 11th in 2005-06 but only the bottom three were less prolific. Everton are currently sixth; on goals scored, they would be seventh.
So is the Steady Eddie who produced this team, often the antithesis of the risk-takers and game-makers of Manchester United, the man to succeed Ferguson at Old Trafford? Yes, he is; of course he is.
For what would it say if United simply went out and appointed one of the marquee names that flit between the elite clubs of Europe: Carlo Ancelotti (AC Milan, Juventus, Chelsea, Paris St-Germain) or Mourinho (Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan, Real Madrid)? What would it say if, Roman Abramovich-style, they hurled a fortune at the latest flavour of the month in Europe, 2013’s equivalent of Andre Villas-Boas?
United would be saying that English football doesn’t matter. That building a team doesn’t matter. That investing in youth is irrelevant. That consistency is bunk. That learning, personal development and loyalty are of no consequence.
These are the traits Moyes has brought to Everton over the last 11 seasons and are, coincidentally, the values that Sir Alex Ferguson instilled at Manchester United. So what United would be saying is that Ferguson did not matter, either. His beliefs and ethos were trivial, his 27 years condemned with a wave of the hand, or shrug of the shoulders.
There was a predictable backlash when the appointment of Moyes was confirmed. There is almost always a backlash against a new manager these days.
Wolverhampton Wanderers were going to give Mick McCarthy’s job to Steve Bruce until social media and the loudest mouths got to work on his reputation and the wise men in the boardroom panicked.
No doubt some of those now screaming longest about the comedy of errors that followed were also very vocal about Bruce’s impending arrival. They will have time to reflect on this irony while travelling to their first League One fixture of next season. Bruce, meanwhile, is back in the Premier League, against all odds, with Hull City.
So it helps, strangely, that the men at the helm of Manchester United are exiles. The decision-making members of the Glazer family are not out checking the local pulse every two minutes. They are not party to the phone-ins and the debate, they are not plugged into feedback from the message boards.
Quite probably, they have listened only to the man who marshalled the last 26 seasons so brilliantly, and will have taken his guidance on what is best for their club.
Had Ferguson given Moyes a poor review, it is unlikely he would have been putting the finishing touches to his contract on Thursday. And we have to believe Ferguson is a judge of managers. That he knows what he created at Old Trafford, and who best to take it on; for it was a lot more than just a winning team.
Ferguson will look at the way Moyes has nurtured young players and recognise an echo of the care he put into the proteges from United’s academy. He will note the number of times he has bumped into Moyes at matches, doing his homework when others delegate. And he will respect Moyes’s scrappiness, the way he has fought his corner at Everton, in his own small way knocking Liverpool from their perch on Merseyside, too.
Moyes is a manager in Ferguson’s image. One can see why Sir Alex would have been horrified at the thought of the dilettante Sven Goran Eriksson reaping the benefit of his hard work and is happy to pass his legacy to Moyes. There is a statement inherent in the award of a six-year contract.
Ferguson’s presence is blessing and curse for Moyes. To have Ferguson influential in his ambassadorial, directorial role at the club means his successor should at least be given time. Equally, when results dip — as they inevitably do, at all clubs, even the biggest — it means the fans have a go-to guy sitting in the stands. Moyes is back-to-back defeats away from the supporters loudly beseeching the man whose name is emblazoned on a stand after three decades of sheer brilliance to sort it out.
Undoubtedly, Mourinho’s list of achievements would buy him more time. Pep Guardiola could probably afford to lose a few at Bayern Munich, too, next season. Yet there is a deeper force at work here. Ultimately United, like Arsenal post-Arsene Wenger, almost have a duty to English football.
As the first club, it is United’s obligation to lead the way and halt this obsession with foreign as better, with track records that are simply impossible for a British manager to replicate in the domestic game. Moyes, unlike say Jurgen Klopp of Borussia Dortmund, has not won the league. But who could win the league at Everton in current circumstances? Would Klopp? Would Mourinho? Hell, would Ferguson?
By appointing Moyes and giving him the opportunity to be successful, United are establishing a new method of evaluation.
They are stating, rightly, that worth in a modern football world so dominated by a financial elite cannot simply be assessed on the pages of record books. That what Moyes has achieved at Everton is, if anything, more impressive than another league title at Porto, where the last five managers to serve a full season have all delivered the championship.
Perhaps greater realism will follow. Having captained Manchester United to titles as a player, and won promotion as a coach on three occasions, why shouldn’t Bruce, for instance, be considered a potential Manchester United manager?
Does he not know a player? Does he not know European football? What was he supposed to do: take Birmingham City or Wigan Athletic into the Champions League? Is that what Mourinho would have done?
Harry Redknapp doesn’t regard winning the FA Cup with Ports-mouth as his greatest achievement, although it would be the headline on his c.v. He feels taking Bournemouth into English football’s second tier for the first time, or keeping Ports-mouth in the Premier League in 2004 and 2006, were superior; no doubt as Moyes regards what others might term mediocrity as success, of sorts.
Would it make Moyes a better manager had he won a domestic cup? Did that elevate Steve McClaren to a different sphere? Will it do the same for Roberto Martinez on Saturday? What if Wigan are relegated, too? Evaluate that.
Everton will feel aggrieved at losing Moyes, yet with the emotion of the moment removed it may prove good for them, too.
How inconsequential would it make the club appear if 11 years of consolidation and improvement at Goodison Park were felt by United to be meaningless?
Perversely, Everton need to have Moyes poached. It shows the club are noticed and important. What message would it send if the achievements of those outside the Champions League elite were met with indifference? How would Everton attract a promising manager such as Martinez if life beyond the top five was just a giant graveyard shift and all positions interchangeable? In Spain or Italy, Moyes would already have been rewarded with a major opportunity. Then again, so would Sam Allardyce and, before him, Alan Curbishley.
Perhaps it counts in Moyes’s favour that he is Scottish and therefore immune to the advances of the Football Association. One of the factors that surely goes against an English manager at a major Premier League club is that the talent pool is so shallow any coach with Champions League experience would instantly be on the radar as the next national boss.
It helps that Moyes, like Ferguson, would see United as the pinnacle of his career.
So Moyes it is, and Moyes it should be. If transforming a club, if being the best and most consistent manager outside of the highest echelon in England, if producing good young players and identifying the premium talent available for the budget, does not prepare a man for Manchester United, what does?
It is not just that Moyes deserves this appointment, English football deserves it, too. It deserves to be taken seriously. It deserves to matter. United are saying that what happens at Everton is significant. The alternative was not to reject one man, but the worth of the entire game in this country.
Daily Mail