On A Scale Of 1 To 10, Rate Moyes


Status
Not open for further replies.
Okie dokie. A detailed argument follows.

I think virtually every member of the board would agree with the following statements:

- the club has been in a mess for years, poor governance has been a running theme
- the end of last season, with the signing of some quality players in January felt like a movement in the right direction
- Moyes was seen as the obvious choice post Sam but had limited time

Not one person expected top 10. Most people expected a season of 15th or lower with the hope of a higher placing. Leicester, miracles etc.

Moyes came in with a pedigree. He did a cracking job at Everton, was set up to fail at Man Utd and was on a hiding to nothing in Spain. But we had a competent manager. Not an exciting manager. But someone who was solid and would build foundations. What we got was the following:

Signings. A critique:
Mika - a panicked signing. Adds nothing
Manquillo - you say he wasn't picked to start. Why, I ask would you loan someone who has played at Liverpool and Marseille on loan to sit on the bench? Behind Billy Jones? And set a (now disputed) purchase price of £12m?
Papy - well well well. I buy the logic of inflation. But Chelsea bit our hands off. And he doesn't get in ahead of a 35/36 year old JOS
Oviedo - I like him, a good buy
N'Dong - jury is out. Scouted by old regime? Who knows.
Lescott - talk is of £37k a week. For someone who has played how many minutes? After failing in f***ing Greece?
Gibson - absolute f***ing dross. Past it and injured
Pienaar - I actually get the logic. Free.
Anichibe - ditto. Did something initially.
Januzaj - an absolute disaster. And Moyes knows him. An utter waste of f***ing space. A heart the size of a pea. He can fuck off
McNair - £5m for nothing. He's a championship player. He's escaped flack as injured, but he's second tier
Love - only 500k but third choice. Offers nothing
Denayer - good loan, hasn't worked out

Selection: a critique
1) we all knew Pickford was our best keeper. All of us. It took Mannone to get injured to happen. Since then our best player
2) Khazri - has he got fat? Demotivated? Who knows? But he still offers something and has virtually no opportunity to prove himself. Bar 15mins here and there. Set up to fail
3) who plays where? Denayer at the back? Midfield? Love starts at right back (3rd choice tho) and then disappears. Gooch starts and can't get a game post injury

Man management:
Well let's call it mood. Read the board. Look at the crowds. Look at the players
- comments post Boro (interpret them as you like)

We're set up to lose. He has sucked the life out of the players and the fans.

He got a tough hand. A club badly run. But he has not done one positive thing. Not one signing that we think improves us. Not one. Short term drivel.

And negativity.

Marco Silva sold his two best players but changed the mood. Moyes has changed the mood for the worst.

Listen to Chunky for he is wise.

Bang on post mate.
 
Okie dokie. A detailed argument follows.

I think virtually every member of the board would agree with the following statements:

- the club has been in a mess for years, poor governance has been a running theme
- the end of last season, with the signing of some quality players in January felt like a movement in the right direction
- Moyes was seen as the obvious choice post Sam but had limited time

Not one person expected top 10. Most people expected a season of 15th or lower with the hope of a higher placing. Leicester, miracles etc.

Moyes came in with a pedigree. He did a cracking job at Everton, was set up to fail at Man Utd and was on a hiding to nothing in Spain. But we had a competent manager. Not an exciting manager. But someone who was solid and would build foundations. What we got was the following:

Signings. A critique:
Mika - a panicked signing. Adds nothing
Manquillo - you say he wasn't picked to start. Why, I ask would you loan someone who has played at Liverpool and Marseille on loan to sit on the bench? Behind Billy Jones? And set a (now disputed) purchase price of £12m?
Papy - well well well. I buy the logic of inflation. But Chelsea bit our hands off. And he doesn't get in ahead of a 35/36 year old JOS
Oviedo - I like him, a good buy
N'Dong - jury is out. Scouted by old regime? Who knows.
Lescott - talk is of £37k a week. For someone who has played how many minutes? After failing in f***ing Greece?
Gibson - absolute f***ing dross. Past it and injured
Pienaar - I actually get the logic. Free.
Anichibe - ditto. Did something initially.
Januzaj - an absolute disaster. And Moyes knows him. An utter waste of f***ing space. A heart the size of a pea. He can fuck off
McNair - £5m for nothing. He's a championship player. He's escaped flack as injured, but he's second tier
Love - only 500k but third choice. Offers nothing
Denayer - good loan, hasn't worked out

Selection: a critique
1) we all knew Pickford was our best keeper. All of us. It took Mannone to get injured to happen. Since then our best player
2) Khazri - has he got fat? Demotivated? Who knows? But he still offers something and has virtually no opportunity to prove himself. Bar 15mins here and there. Set up to fail
3) who plays where? Denayer at the back? Midfield? Love starts at right back (3rd choice tho) and then disappears. Gooch starts and can't get a game post injury

Man management:
Well let's call it mood. Read the board. Look at the crowds. Look at the players
- comments post Boro (interpret them as you like)

We're set up to lose. He has sucked the life out of the players and the fans.

He got a tough hand. A club badly run. But he has not done one positive thing. Not one signing that we think improves us. Not one. Short term drivel.

And negativity.

Marco Silva sold his two best players but changed the mood. Moyes has changed the mood for the worst.


Firstly, thanks for taking the time to write that.


I actually agree with your post all the way down until the point that you started rating the signings, with the slight exception that I thought Moyes was an exciting appointment at the time, but that's by the by.

We obviously disagree on the importance/logic of some of the signings but even then we agree on a number of them.

As far as the ones we disagree on are concerned, take Mika for example, although he hasn't played, there have been times this season where each of our two first choice goalies have been injured. If they'd both got injured at the same time at any point then our next choice keeper would have been Stryjek. Personally I think it was a wise move to have a 3rd choice keeper with at least some experience of first-team football somewhere rather than risk having to rely on an inexperienced youngster if the worst case scenario had happened. So, despite the fact he hasn't played, I still consider it a good signing in principle.

Same situation with Lescott, although as you say, if the alleged wages are true then I agree it would be a bit of an eyebrow-raiser. Hard one to judge, but we were very much desperate for a central defender at that point in time. I'm certainly not waving flags about this one.

As for Manquillo, in fairness he was probably brought in for "competition" rather than strictly "backup" for the other two despite how I worded it earlier, but I don't see why you'd be against the idea of a clause-to-buy in case he was a success. After all it's not too long ago we had another pair of relatively unknown full-backs on loan who went on to become highly sought-after and rated as being worth a great deal of money in Danny Rose and Marcus Alonso, for whom many were crying "why didn't we have a clause-to-buy?" and in my opinion rightly so.

As far as I'm concerned, we won't know whether Ndong, Love or McNair (the main 3 signings of "the plan" in my opinion) have been successful until we've given them time to develop. I reckon that by this time next year we'll be in a much better position to judge because I don't believe any of them were brought in to be instant first-choice this season in their respective positions.

Selection:

1) I'm not sure that's true. Granted many thought he had a bright future ahead of him but I don't think there was too much of a realistic argument for Pickford being first choice at the start of the season. Fair enough though, that's neither here nor there because neither you or I are suggesting he was initially picked on merit. Clearly injury to Mannone gave Pickford his chance and he took it well. It wouldn't take a genius manager to make the decision to keep picking him once the plaudits started rolling in.

2) As you say, it's a difficult one to judge because we haven't seen what's been going on behind the scenes. I certainly would have liked to have seen more of him this year, but Moyes did say a couple of weeks back that his "attitude in training had improved recently" for what it's worth, so as you say, who knows what's really been going on there?

3) I would think that they experiment in training and use software and training exercises to better judge which players might work in which positions in which formations against which teams playing which formations and so on. I don't really see what your point is here. Some players can play in a number of different positions. Some players might be performing well in training for a while and then tail off. There are all manner of reasons why players might play one week and not the next, or play in one position one week and another the next. Is versatility a bad thing nowadays?

Man Management:

If you mean "mood of the fans" then that's surely more to do with our poor results than to do with Moyes' demeanour or "man-management" of the fans, isn't it? As someone said on this board a while ago, Peter Reid was deemed as dour and so the crowd made up the "Cheer Up Peter Reid" song. Nobody gave a toss he was dour because we were winning. Have our fans really changed so much in the last few decades? Are we no longer as strong emotionally as we were back then? Have our fans suddenly in the last few decades become so weak-willed and insecure in their own emotions that their own mood is now directly dictated by how well our manager sounds in his interviews? Or is the big deal being made of his demeanour actually just irrelevant bollocks? A big deal being made of it for the sake of it?

I don't believe we are or have ever been "set up to lose". I think one of this season's primary objectives has been to reduce the wage bill, and another has been to avoid spending a premium to get ageing players to come here who will have little or no sell-on value afterwards. Relegation has been an unfortunate side-effect of these policies, but as I don't believe relegation is the end of the world, I see it as being just a step in the direction of sorting out the club's finances in order to have a better go at the Prem in the future once we've got rid of the debt, hopefully with this new transfer strategy at the core of it all.

You say Moyes has changed the mood for the worst, I say the results and subsequent relegation have changed the mood for the worst and Moyes is just the nearest most of us have to a target deserving of the blame. I get the need for it. I just disagree with the degree that he actually deserves the blame. For me, his decisions have been - on paper - perfectly fine (as far as decisions that we have enough information to judge are concerned anyway) and his demeanour is irrelevant. For me the blame lies predominantly with Fortuna, who sadly won't do us the service of turning up to be counted. Moyes is a distant second but has the disadvantage of being corporeal, so he gets the stick.
 
You seem like an intelligent man fyl2u and I admire your optimism but I just can't see it. Moyes would get 1 from me and that would be VERY generous. I objected to bringing him in at all, for a few reasons:

1) His 'success' at Everton was reasonable but not spectacular and a long time ago now.
2) Everton have improved without him.
3) He was hopeless at Man Utd.
4) He was even worse in Spain!
5) For a long time now he's looked like yesterday's man.
6) Confidence shot to hell.

Of course, I might have been wrong in all of this so has he done ANYTHING this season to persuade me I was wrong about him? No, absolutely not.

1) All of his buys have been awful.
2) When we're supposed to be making money on players we buy, all of his look like buys we'll lose money on.
3) He took a team that finished VERY strongly at the end of last season and spent £30m+ to make that team considerably worse.)
4) If I'm generous I'd say that tactically he has nothing beyond Plan A but in truth, for a lot of this season he hasn't even looked like he has a Plan A at all.
5) Team selections have been bizarre
6) Substitutions have been woeful
7) Couldn't motivate horny teenage lads in a brothel
8) Are the injuries really just unlucky or is it a mixture of terrible training methods and players skiving?

He's sucked the life out of the club in a way I can't remember ever happening before. He brought nothing, he's achieved nothing and I hope he leaves with nothing. If we give him money to spend in the summer we might as well flush it down the toilet. Actually I agree that I think we should take two seasons to get back up at least to make sure we're better prepared but with this idiot in charge we're more likely to be taken down to League 1 next season.
 
1

You seem like an intelligent man fyl2u and I admire your optimism but I just can't see it. Moyes would get 1 from me and that would be VERY generous. I objected to bringing him in at all, for a few reasons:

1) His 'success' at Everton was reasonable but not spectacular and a long time ago now.
2) Everton have improved without him.
3) He was hopeless at Man Utd.
4) He was even worse in Spain!
5) For a long time now he's looked like yesterday's man.
6) Confidence shot to hell.

Of course, I might have been wrong in all of this so has he done ANYTHING this season to persuade me I was wrong about him? No, absolutely not.

1) All of his buys have been awful.
2) When we're supposed to be making money on players we buy, all of his look like buys we'll lose money on.
3) He took a team that finished VERY strongly at the end of last season and spent £30m+ to make that team considerably worse.)
4) If I'm generous I'd say that tactically he has nothing beyond Plan A but in truth, for a lot of this season he hasn't even looked like he has a Plan A at all.
5) Team selections have been bizarre
6) Substitutions have been woeful
7) Couldn't motivate horny teenage lads in a brothel
8) Are the injuries really just unlucky or is it a mixture of terrible training methods and players skiving?

He's sucked the life out of the club in a way I can't remember ever happening before. He brought nothing, he's achieved nothing and I hope he leaves with nothing. If we give him money to spend in the summer we might as well flush it down the toilet. Actually I agree that I think we should take two seasons to get back up at least to make sure we're better prepared but with this idiot in charge we're more likely to be taken down to League 1 next season.
This is a huge reason he has failed to an insane degree IMO
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top