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

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.