Lunchtime in Bangkok, and David Moyes relaxes into his seat as he prepares for his first major interview as Manchester United manager. It has been a hectic few weeks since he signed for a reported £5million a year. His brief is to lead United’s formidable group of players into a new era after 27 years of unprecedented success under Sir Alex Ferguson, the Godfather of all managers. No pressure then.
Ferguson had a reputation for being tough, and Moyes insists that he will be no pushover. The players have already witnessed his first flash of temper:
“It happened in training. I told the players to get their finger out and give a bit more,” said Moyes. “I had no qualms about that. Top players don’t have a problem with it. But don’t call it ‘The Hairdryer’ , someone else has already copyrighted that!
“Training has been incredibly competitive. Fierce. The noticeable aspect for me is that they are comfortable as winners. I have been wowed by Ryan Giggs’s technical ability. Of course I knew how good a player he was, but at close quarters and seeing how good he is with the ball is something I’m now privy to.”
When Ferguson bowed out after a record 13th Premier League title and handpicked Moyes to replace him, many were delighted to see the Glaswegian selected ahead of more glamorous names like Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. But he knows, however, that there are sceptics ready to highlight his lack of trophies if things go awry. The biggest question-mark is whether he can handle big names or provocative managers like Mourinho, who he will face when Chelsea visit Old Trafford on the second weekend of the Premier League season.
“I’m relishing it all. When you’re a boy from Glasgow, you’re quite ‘gallus’, he said. “It’s a term we’ve got up there - it means you’ve been through a lot. So I’ve no problem with Jose or whatever other people might say. I look forward to it. I’ve had to battle my whole managerial career. I remember getting the Preston job and people saying it shouldn’t be me but a bigger name like Joe Royle or Ian Rush. So I think this job will come with pitfalls. There will be questions about what I do. Hopefully I’m tough enough to stand up for myself.”
His first test of big-time management is navigating through the Wayne Rooney issue. The 27-year-old, currently out for three weeks with a hamstring injury, fell out with Ferguson so badly last season it threatened his entire United future.
Moyes, who handed Rooney his first-team debut at 16 with Everton but later sued him for damages over comments made in the striker’s autobiography, has privately put his arm around the player’s shoulder.
“It’s a chance for me to get Wayne right back to where he was,” said Moyes. “But I’ve also got to make sure we don’t just concentrate on him. Manchester United aren’t about Wayne Rooney. Manchester United are about the team, the club. We are talking about him now, and rightly so, but what I won’t allow is Wayne to become more important than the football club and the football team.
“It’s going to take time to see how I work with the players, and that applies to Wayne as well.”
Listening to Moyes skilfully strike the balance between encouraging his player and setting out guidelines, it is clear how far he has developed from the intense young manager at Everton prone to falling out with players like Rooney or Joleon Lescott.
“Like young players mature, I think young managers mature. And I hope I have,” he said candidly. “˜Listen, it’s a challenge to me at Manchester United. It’s a whole new environment, a new level, so I will do everything I can to step up to the plate.”
So far only Uruguayan right-back Guillermo Varela is a new signing. Moyes promises work is being done behind the scenes and chief executive Ed Woodward insists money is available for any target he wants – thus setting up an enticing future move for Tottenham’s £70million Footballer of The Year Gareth Bale.
Priority for Moyes is two top-class midfield players, one creative playmaker and one attacking player who can score 15 goals a season. United would like Cesc Fabregas if he decides to leave Barcelona and Moyes’s former Everton player Marouane Fellaini is also an option. Interest in another Goodison player, left-back Leighton Baines, remains though United will not go above £12million.
“We are looking at the best players,” said Moyes. “But it won’t take the focus away from trying to sign good players who are hungry and thinking of climbing the ladder.”
Significantly, Moyes won’t have to sell anyone in this window, with the club happy to carry a larger-than-normal squad until January so he has time to assess his players properly.
There are obvious connections between Moyes and the legend he is following. Moyes’s father worked as a draughtsman for the same Govan company where Ferguson’s father was a shipbuilder. Moyes’s father coached Ferguson in a Glasgow youth team. Both men graduated through the city’s famous Drumchapel Amateurs FC, where Moyes’s mother washed the kit and his father was on the board.
Ferguson often told friends he saw plenty of his own indomitable spirit in the young David, who took his first manager’s job at Preston aged 34 then spent a decade making Everton the best pound-for-pound team in the country.
As he gets up to leave the table after two thoroughly engaging hours, Moyes tells a quick story to explain the fluctuating fortunes of football.
“When Carlo Ancelotti was Milan coach, I used to go over to watch his training sessions,” he explained. “The day he got fired at Chelsea was at Goodison, I saw him in the corridor and he said, “I am losing my job, David, I want to come and watch you train!”
“That’s football, a giant industry but a small circle all the same.” - Daily Mail