Comparison between Brendan Rodgers and David Moyes' first season in charge: Part 2

Brendan Rodgers and David Moyes – Comparing the two managers

After the first half of their respective seasons, it seemed like United had started improving and David Moyes was turning out to be a good manager while Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool were still looking inconsistent and clueless. Here’s a look at how the second half of their respective first seasons unfolded. The article also discusses that inspite of similar results Moyes was sacked but Rodgers was afforded more time.

The January transfer window and the second half of the season

Rodgers had identified the key problem areas for Liverpool and went about correcting them in the January window. Liverpool bought Daniel Sturridge and Phillipe Coutinho for a combined 20 million pounds. Sturridge looked every bit like the player Chelsea thought they would get when they bought him off City and managed to score 10 goals in 14 league appearances while Coutinho managed to bamboozle the Kop with his mesmerizing vision and got 3 goals and 5 assists in 13 appearances. Their impact was bigger than what the above numbers suggest.

With Sturridge and Coutinho coming in, defenders had to shift their focus from Suarez which also helped the Uruguayan’s goal tally. Liverpool had scored 31 goals in 19 appearances at the halfway point of the season. They scored another 40 in the next 19. Liverpool had taken 25 points in the first 19 games, they accrued 36 points in the last 19 games of the season.

Unlike Rodgers, Moyes failed to identify their team’s Achilles heel and instead decided to make another big money signing in Juan Mata hoping that signing someone like him would galvanize the whole team. United fans were crying out for a central midfielder but all they got was another central attacking midfielder added to their already top heavy team roster alongside Fellaini, Kagawa and Rooney.

Why Ander Herrera was not pursued again will always remain a mystery! Why he chose not to spend those 37 million pounds on someone like Vidal will be another puzzler given that Juventus had already been eliminated from the Champions League. Vidal is a midfielder who can both attack and defend and would have been the perfect foil for Carrick.

The second biggest mistake that Moyes made was offering Rooney another contract. Rooney has barely offered anything spectacular this season considering that he is paid more than Suarez, Aguero, Toure or Hazard. Even Jay Rodriguez has had more impact at Southampton and scored more open play goals than Rooney has. When Moyes bought Mata, it was widely expected that it would be end of the line for Rooney and that indeed should have been the case but instead Moyes gave Rooney a new contract and it resulted in the “Too many cooks spoil the broth” scenario.

The table below clearly shows where Rodgers exactly gets one up over Moyes. Liverpool lost only 3 of their last 19 games while Moyes has already lost 5 this campaign.

Round	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38
Liverpool under Brendan Rodgers
Result	L	D	L	D	L	W	D	W	D	D	D	W	D	L	W	W	L	W	L	W	W	L	W	D	D	L	W	W	W	L	W	D	D	D	W	D	W	W
Position	18	16	18	17	18	14	14	11	12	12	13	11	11	12	11	10	12	8	10	9	8	8	7	7	7	9	8	7	6	7	7	7	7	7	7	7	7	7
Manchester United under David Moyes
Result	W	D	L	W	L	L	W	D	W	W	W	D	D	L	L	W	W	W	W	L	W	L	W	L	D	D	W	W	L	W	L	W	W	L
Position	1	4	7	5	8	12	9	8	8	8	5	6	8	9	9	8	8	7	6	7	7	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	7	7	7	7	7	7

The differences between Rodgers Liverpool and Moyes United continue to widen

With Rodgers, Liverpool improved over the second half of the season while United under Moyes had stagnated. Rodgers managed to finally come up with a system that brought the best out of his players. Moyes after 51 matches had to still figure out one. In fact, he had used 51 different starting line ups in each of the 51 matches he managed and still looked clueless as to what his best team was.

One could see Rodgers team playing with a certain philosophy. They were trying to find a balance between possession-based and counter-attacking football. The results were not always positive as the defeats to Southampton and West Brom in the second half of the campaign suggest. But you could see the team progressing and improving all the time.

Moyes’ team looked similar to Big Sam’s West Ham and their so called “19th century football tactics”. Often against better teams, they were clueless, disjointed and disoriented and more often than not looked to just lump the ball into the opposition box to no avail. United under Moyes did not seem to be getting better or going a particular way. They neither could outscore their opponents nor could they protect their own goal. The latter was a big part of the reason why Everton were so successful under Moyes.

Manchester United players look dejected after losing to Newcastle United

Liverpool also managed to win only once against last season’s top six, the exact same number as United have managed this season under Moyes but Liverpool showed character and determination in those defeats. After the 2-2 draw against Liverpool at Anfield last year, Yaya Toure claimed that it was the toughest match he had played in England. After United’s defeat to Liverpool, Rooney claimed that this was the worst he had seen Manchester United play. The contrast could not have been clearer.

Can he emulate Rodgers?

Rodgers inherited a team that had finished 8th and had accrued the lowest points tally in some time. There was a lot of scope for improvement given Liverpool still had players like Gerrard, Agger, Reina and Suarez.Moyes, on the other hand, had inherited a championship winning squad. For many, it was the worst squad to win the Premier League in recent years and Ferguson had already extracted the best he could out of those. The core groupa of players he had inherited like Vidic, Ferdinand, Carrick, Evra, Rooney and Van Persie were all aging and certainly past their best.

Is the decision to sack Moyes justified?

Moyes had the second best away record in the Premier League. United only needed to improve their home record under Moyes and they could have challenged once again. The problem was not their home record per se but the manner of their defeats. In matches at home and especially against bigger teams, United have looked abject and insipid. Moyes’s tactical inflexibility and naivety had also come to the fore. Rodgers, Martinez as well as Pellegrini have out-thought him not once, but twice in a season.

The only credible performance that United have had are against Bayern Munich and the return leg against Olympiakos at Old Trafford! Those performances suggested that he may not have been as bad as was made out and showed that he could have achieved more. The worrying aspect was his failure to motivate his players and his team which was never the case with Everton. The first leg defeat at Olympiakos as well as their losses to City and Liverpool bear testament to that fact.

Teams coming to Goodison Park arrived with the hope of taking some points off of Everton. At Old Trafford, that was clearly not the case. Moyes failed to come to grips with that fact. Such was the aura of the Ferguson era that even this season teams have come out to defend (until Liverpool and City chose to start a new trend). The same defensive tactics, that worked wonders at Everton, had thus failed spectacularly. A team like United should not be worried about the opposition and this is exactly what Moyes failed to rectify.

The players must shoulder equal blame for United’s disappointing campaign. Vidic already looks like he has already reached Italy while Evra seems to be more interested in thinking about his potential suitors during the game rather than the opposition. Van Persie has also failed to adjust to Moyes’ tactics and it seems like the child inside him is shouting something else now.

As a result, it wasn’t a big surprise when the Glazers decided that they have had enough of Moyes and thus decided to sack him.

Is the United board justified in their decision to sack him? Yes and No. Another manager coming in will only extend the transition period. There are very few managers who can have an immediate impact as Martinez and Pulis have had. A large chunk of United’s team looks on their way out of Old Trafford. Having spent a year with them, Moyes would have been in a much better position to judge the deadwood and bring in new faces.

The bigger question is who would be willing to come to United to take them out of their current turmoil and can they do better than Moyes? Klopp, Simeone, Guardiola, Ancelotti would rather stay with a stabilized team then risk their reputation with a team in transition. At present, Van Gaal seems like the only guy who can do something about the disastrous state of affairs at United but he too would be a short term fix.

A season out of the Champions League isn’t always a bad thing (they just need to look at their north western rivals across the M62) and with a stabilized team Moyes could have definitely improved United as he had done with Everton. But Moyes’ failure in the two transfer windows seems to have cost him the job more than anything else. Would you trust the process of rebuilding a team on the shoulders of the person who has just wasted 64 million pounds on two players and does not know how to use them? Most of us wouldn’t!

To read the first part of the article, click here.