Moyes vs van Gaal vs Mourinho - A Retrospective Review

Kag

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Couldn’t really disagree much more with your ultimate conclusions, to be frank.

Of the three, Van Gaal remains the only manager that formed an idea. He knew what he wanted his team to be, even if it never got close to getting there. It was dull, but there was the nugget of an ideology; one that had served him well elsewhere. That ideology managed to piece together the best football we’ve seen post Ferguson, for a small period, even if it wasn’t sustained. The other two didn’t even begin to manage that. They stumbled around taking aim at whoever they could, manufacturing targets for political purpose.

Van Gaal won the FA Cup. Maybe I’m somewhat romantic, but that trophy is worth more than the League and Europa put together. It’s a proper trophy, that.

I know that the football under Van Gaal drove some United supporters into relative despair; I’m not going to undermine this. It was dross, particularly during the first half of his second season. But I would still argue that he’s the only manager that never really lost the players, or the fans. The players played for him. In hindsight, they speak very highly of him. They learned a lot from him. Giggs and Carrick are both on record; they use his knowledge in their practice. He was under all sorts of scrutiny from the press and never once dragged the club through the mud to save his own reputation (he has since, granted, but not then). Moyes didn’t either, to be fair, minus the odd comment here and there.

This is where Mourinho begins to confirm his status as the worst United manager in living memory. Poisonous. He was happy to tear the club apart; burn it to the ground. All to rescue his warped view of the world. I’d never been as disinterested in football in my life. I didn’t watch the games during the third season, not because we were losing games (I don’t really give a shit) but because it was no longer about Manchester United. It was about the one man trying to convince the world of his greatness, without the humour that Van Gaal would bring to the table, or the sheer desperation of a sinking Moyes.

Then there’s the football aspect of the debacle. He bought an entire new first team to the tune of half a billion pounds. Minus De Gea, (at the time) the world’s best goalkeeper, and Shaw, no mug, he bought players to replace every single player in the first team. He spunked it; blurted it right up the wall. All the while playing defeatist football against inferior times and using the players to shield him from the consequences of his inadequacies.

As for Moyes, well, it wasn’t to be. He was never the man. All I will say is that it’s taken seven years for me to truly appreciate just how much of a difficult job that really was. I thought a few midfielders and a new left back to replace Evra would do the trick. In truth, it was never really about that. The reality is that the Glazers, Gill and Ferguson had allowed the whole club to fester and fall backwards. I mean, the sophistication of our entire scouting strategy seemed to boil down to the knowledge of Ferguson and his brother Martin. Moyes was a donut but he never really stood a chance.

To summarise, then: Van Gaal > Moyes > Mourinho.

Only one made me play a round of golf instead.
 

Luke1995

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How do you mention mourinho reign without mentioning his great work in getting rid of Rooney?

Rooney was absolutely a liability for a number of years and no one had the balls to get rid
I don't think he forced Rooney to leave. It was Rooney's decision
 

Luke1995

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Funny enough, the best football was under Van Gaal until the Leicester game, while the worst was also under Van Gaal. Out of the three managers, Van Gaal was the one given more morey and authority over transfers. So, if we're assessing the return that should be expected under these conditions, he would be the worst. But he won the Fa Cup and Moyes didn't. Mourinho, despite the terrible environment he created around the club, was by far the most sucessfull even though he didn't meet champions league expectations. At least he got knocked out in a knockout tie, while Van Gaal went out of the competition in the group stages...
 

stevoc

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Is this an April Fools 2 months late?

Ranking the United managers since Fergie retired.

Mourinho
Van Gaal
Solskjaer
Giggs


Dave
 

Woodzy

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Moyes pretty much lost the ability to play ‘the most difficult job in football’ card by getting rid of the coaching staff from a title winning team.

He set himself up to fail in my opinion.
 

Merlin 1975-78

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You are overrating Moyes massively.

Tactic, Transfer and Heritage the best out of the three :lol:

If Van Gaal is the disastrous one, then Moyes should be the clueless one. He was completely out of his depth before even stepping a foot in here. He is a shit manager at a shit club, that won the lottery with us.
It is hard too argue with any of your comments as you are absolutely right!
 

ghaliboy

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Van Gaal won the FA Cup.
I think it can be more safely attributed to the players on that one. Sprinklings of individual brilliance throughout our same rigid keep the ball at all costs dirgeball that was completely unwatchable.

Ole
Jose

David/LVG
 

amolbhatia50k

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:lol: Why does Jose get a decent rating for youth and LVG get worse? Bizarre.
 

Rish Sawhney

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I’m half convinced OP is Moyes himself. I’m also not buying the theory that we had an ageing squad that wasn’t good enough to challenge for the title. Vidic and Evra played at top levels for another few seasons and so did van Persie and Carrick. And we also had some promising younger players coming through in rafael, de Gea, and a few more.

Van Gaal came at a time where the squad was in shambles after losing 3 out of the 4 first choice defenders in the team and a severely declining Rooney on a massive contract. His transfers were terrible admittedly but he wasn’t used to working for a club where the manager had such a big role in recruiting.

And Mourinho was Mourinho and what happened there was entirely too predictable.

However at the end of the day let’s discuss the main reason we collapsed. People blame SAF and owners for underinvestment or an ageing squad but I don’t buy it. What doomed us was that SAF spent 26 years consolidating power at the club and laying out an infrastructure under him but he didn’t groom a successor from within who understood how that all worked. He should have brought in Ole from the moment he decided he was gonna retire and made him his no. 2 so that he could take over. Instead he handed the reigns over to his best Scottish mate who dismantled the 26 years of work in one fell swoop by firing everyone in a fit of delusional arrogance. And now threads like this have the gall to defend that cretin? It makes me physically ill.
 

POF

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Moyes was an absolute disaster from start to finish. His reputation was "humble and hardworking" but was the exact opposite at United. Named manager in May, officially started in July and his first act was to go on holiday.

The guy won the lottery and instead of working his arse off to earn the role he ran out of time in that first transfer window despite having 3 months to plan it. No problem though. He had a 6 year contract so could take his time!

He just had to be sacked in the end. You just couldn't trust a squad rebuild to Moyes. Vidic saw the writing on the wall and signed a pre contract with Inter in January. Despite that, he was still first choice centre back. No plan at all to transition in Smalling, Jones or Evans.

Van Gaal was an idiotic appointment. Almost as stupid as Moyes. To entrust a complete squad overhaul to a manager heading towards retirement was one of the stupidest decisions made by any club ever. A rebuild of that magnitude takes years, as would Van Gaal's philosophy change. Why then would you entrust that to a manager on a 3 year (fixed end point) contract?

Van Gaal's comments about getting "number 7" on his list just sums up his tenure. Why were there even 7 players on a list? Surely, that list should only include attainable and available targets.

The upside of the Van Gaal era for me was that it highlighted how important "the Manchester United way" really is. The style of play was abysmal and it ushered in the first batch of signings with the wrong character. Irrespective of ability, it highlighted why United should have Rafael over Darmian, Nani over Di Maria or Chicharito over Falcao.

I don't agree with a lot if the OP but I do agree on Van Gaal's youth policy. Leaving the squad criminally short and giving debuts to players who never had the quality to be first team players is an irresponsible strategy. McNair, Blackett, Weir, Poole, Love, Riley. Not even their parents would have thought they'd be long term first team players. Not to mention Phil Jones the set piece specialist!

Jose's reign cemented the importance of United culture and pretty much sums up Ole's "I'd rather a hole than an a$$hole" comment. Good manager, tactically excellent but an incredible level of insecurity. I don't think I've ever seen another manager who has been so successful in such constant need of vindication. It turned him into a delusional, vindictive idiot.

His first 18 months were largely positive and when United signed Sanchez that was a pivotal moment for his tenure. United were in great form, chasing down City and had got one over them in the transfer market.

But the squad imploded and Pogba (one of the few players Jose never criticised in public) chucked his toys. It was the beginning of the end for Jose. He lost the plot and went into self preservation mode looking to deflect blame onto anyone but himself. Pogba arse kissing was replaced by a pretty public fallout and the nadir of Jose's meltdown was the press conference following the Sevilla game which was an absolute disgrace.

In regards to levels of success, Jose was best post Fergie, then Van Gaal, then Moyes. There is an argument that Van Gaal did more damage than Moyes and that is probably true. Van Gaal's rebuild failed but Moyes was just so unbelievably bad, the club couldn't even afford to let him try.
 

RUCK4444

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No doubt Moyes was the worst manager but Imo of the three appointments LVG is perhaps the most damaging.

After Moyes the club had to stop the slide but appointed somebody with a completely different philosophy who also happened to be at the very end of his career. Big mistake, possibly the biggest mistake we’ve made because it compounded the error in appointing Moyes.

It meant that the club backed LVG to the tune of 300 million on substandard players, all the while his tedious slow motion football massively regressed the mentality of the squad into the polar opposite of what we know and love about United and the swashbuckling, attack minded football that we were associated with.

It was a multifaceted failure that was hugely costly both financially and set us back years in our style of play on the pitch.
 

hmchan

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I admit I may have overrated Moyes, but is there any point other than "clearing the backroom staffs" and "bringing the team from 1st to 7th"? These 2 points have already been addressed in the OP, plus I really doubt the argument that keeping the coaching staffs would keep us in success. I also have to clarify that I don't rate him as the best out of the 3, and I have clearly stated that in the table.
 

Rish Sawhney

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I admit I may have overrated Moyes, but is there any point other than "clearing the backroom staffs" and "bringing the team from 1st to 7th"? These 2 points have already been addressed in the OP, plus I really doubt the argument that keeping the coaching staffs would keep us in success. I also have to clarify that I don't rate him as the best out of the 3, and I have clearly stated that in the table.
If we had the same coaching staff and appointed anyone from within say Ole or Butt or Joyce I think we’d have maintained a solid top 4 position at worst.

The importance of the back room staff can not be understated as that was the club infrastructure. Everything from day to day training to recruitment was delegated to various people under Fergie. It is dumb IMO to get rid of all that and complain that the club has no structure just because we didn’t have a DOF. We had a structure until Moyes got rid of it and that left us a shell of an organization with literally no infrastructure.
 
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If you are grading Moyes it’s a U.

He has the arrogance to ditch existing transfer targets, and pursued a joint deal of Fellaini and Baines all summer whilst Fellaini had a release clause. Only at the last minute did he shit the bed, and we paid £4-5m OVER what we could have paid all summer.

after knowing he was getting the biggest job in football, he went on a 2 week holiday and started late. For a man who supposedly works hard, this was unforgivable.

Moyes was so far out of his depth, he had no clue what he was doing and is the worst manager easily post Fergie, and most probably in the history of the club.

Under Moyes, every club in the league thought they could win at OT - and so many of them did.

this is a man, when playing Liverpool told our fans and the press that they were favourites.

the only positive thing he did was promote Januzai - and he’s not gone into great things.

I was at Carrington the week he was sacked, and all the staff I was able to speak to were elated that he has gone. They despised him.

Moyes telling Ferdinand and Vidic to play like Phil Jagielka!!!
 
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Anyone thinking Moyes was the best one? He did advance in the CL further than the other two.
Also won more titles per season than the other two.
He also didn't spend as much as the others.
Football was also probably the most entertaining overall. Even if Mourinhos football was better before the end.
Best not to talk about the league though and games vs City and Liverpool.
titles?

I was at the Charity Shield - I don’t remember the score, and I didn’t stay to see them lift the cup.

It’s not a title. It never has been. It’s a pre-season friendly.

Anyone who considers a pre season game as a title needs to give their heads a serious wobble.
 

RedRob

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LVG and Mourinho kept us stagnant.
We had a catastrophic collapse under Moyes.

As others have said, the first two things Moyes did after getting the job were to go on holiday and sack the entire backroom staff (Rene and Phelan in particular were highly regarded at the time). He then brought in only Fellaini over the summer, famously for more money than he could have spent on both Fellaini and Baines just a few weeks earlier.

LVG had his famous philosophy. It wasn't a pretty philosophy and it wasn't going to turn is into title contenders, but had he been appointed as SAF, it's debatable whether we would have collapsed in the same way as under Moyes. Likewise Mourinho; while he's always been a short-term manager, he's never collapsed immediately after taking a job.

Mourinho and LVG may have failed to lift us out of the mess (even though both won feel-good trophies), but Moyes was the one who took us there. It's basically like trying to blame the second and third mechanics who can't fix your car after the first one took an axe to your engine.
 

El Jefe

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So Moyes lost all his big games convincingly and LVG was at his best in the big games but Moyes scores higher in tactics? :lol:

Horrendous all over from the OP.
 

hmchan

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I’m half convinced OP is Moyes himself. I’m also not buying the theory that we had an ageing squad that wasn’t good enough to challenge for the title. Vidic and Evra played at top levels for another few seasons and so did van Persie and Carrick. And we also had some promising younger players coming through in rafael, de Gea, and a few more.

Van Gaal came at a time where the squad was in shambles after losing 3 out of the 4 first choice defenders in the team and a severely declining Rooney on a massive contract. His transfers were terrible admittedly but he wasn’t used to working for a club where the manager had such a big role in recruiting.

And Mourinho was Mourinho and what happened there was entirely too predictable.

However at the end of the day let’s discuss the main reason we collapsed. People blame SAF and owners for underinvestment or an ageing squad but I don’t buy it. What doomed us was that SAF spent 26 years consolidating power at the club and laying out an infrastructure under him but he didn’t groom a successor from within who understood how that all worked. He should have brought in Ole from the moment he decided he was gonna retire and made him his no. 2 so that he could take over. Instead he handed the reigns over to his best Scottish mate who dismantled the 26 years of work in one fell swoop by firing everyone in a fit of delusional arrogance. And now threads like this have the gall to defend that cretin? It makes me physically ill.
Did Vidic play at top levels for another few seasons? As far as I know, he conceded a penalty and got a red card in his competitive debut at Inter, then he made an error leading to a goal after he returned from suspension. He made so many mistakes that he was heavily criticized and widely labelled as a flop. He later became out of favor and was released. Ferdinand struggled at QPR in the same way, but few people mentioned because they still thought they were the best CB partership in the world.
 

Karlos PFC

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Moyes's greatest heritage was 80 crosses against a relegated Fulham.

That was the most hideous performance I've seen for 30 years now
 

Mr Smith

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Others have already said everything I already would have said about Moyes, so I'll not bother with further comment.

Van Gaal is a really interesting one. In hindsight, he never suited our club at all, and was the antithesis of a lot of what United had been for the previous 30 years. I do however think that he suffered from the absolute worst boardroom decision in the post-Fergie era. Between throwing money at the problem with no strategy and Woodward boasting about our transfer kitty and inflating prices for the club indefinitely, I honestly believe more lasting damage was done during the Van Gaal era than any other post-Fergie period. Things were rescuable after the Moyes season, but the club were in panic mode and made things ten times worse.
 

Red For Ever

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I'll never understand why Moyes thought it was a good idea to get rid of Fergie's coaching staff to bring in the likes of Steve Round and Jimmy fecking Lumsden.
Exactly, even though Moyes was not good enough, if he had left the backroom team in place, he would have had more chance.
The mediocre group he replaced them with did not have the ability, winning attitude or suitable experience to be at United, just like Moyes himself.
 

Mr Smith

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I admit I may have overrated Moyes, but is there any point other than "clearing the backroom staffs" and "bringing the team from 1st to 7th"? These 2 points have already been addressed in the OP, plus I really doubt the argument that keeping the coaching staffs would keep us in success. I also have to clarify that I don't rate him as the best out of the 3, and I have clearly stated that in the table.
Moyes made our football completely one-dimensional. You can see that from the players he played constantly despite being in terrible form, compared to the players who dropped out of the side. He never understood Kagawa or Nani (two of our most creative attackers at the time) so he left them out. Instead he played Young and Valencia over and over again, despite them both being in dire form. Also constantly played conservatively; as soon as we went a goal up he would take attacking players off and have us slow our game down. He was the most unimaginative manager we'll ever have.
 

Paul_Scholes18

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Moyes's greatest heritage was 80 crosses against a relegated Fulham.

That was the most hideous performance I've seen for 30 years now
It showed that we attacked and dominated the game. Should have won it if not for a late goal against us
 

Paul_Scholes18

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So Moyes lost all his big games convincingly and LVG was at his best in the big games but Moyes scores higher in tactics? :lol:

Horrendous all over from the OP.
LVG was all over the place though. Stating with 3-5-2 then 4-1-3-2 then 3-5-2 again and then 4-4-1-1.
Didn't try 4-3-3 before injuries forced his hand near the end.
The overall philosophy was terrible too.
He deserves low rating.
 

Nickelodeon

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Worst Performance/Results: Moyes
Worst Style of Play: LVG
Worst Man Management: Jose
Worst Transfers: LVG
Worst in Expectations Management: Ole
Worst Big Games: Moyes
Worst Small Games: LVG

Worst Overall: Jose
For the simple reason that it was never about the team or performances, it was about his pride. The Sevilla and Spurs home defeat comments as isolated events should’ve led to his dismissal.

Neither of them have done anything positive for such comparisons to be initiated. We deserved at least one manager who claims that we deserve to challenge for the title and had a clear cut plan towards achieving it (hope Ole does it but wouldn’t bet on it). It’s not the lack of title challenges, but the incoherent transfer plus style of play strategy has killed expectations right in the beginning of the season. Obviously, Ed remains the common denominator but I honestly feel that a better appointment back in 2013 could’ve saved us a lot of misery.
 

amolbhatia50k

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So much to disagree on with the OP.

Why is Mourinho and Moyes better on youth than LVG? Why is Moyes 2nd?! Why do Moyes and LVG get mocking nicknames whereas Mourinho gets to to keep the special one?
 

hmchan

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It showed that we attacked and dominated the game. Should have won it if not for a late goal against us
van Gaal, Mourinho and Ole all asked the team to put loads of crosses into the box when we struggled to break a smaller side, despite they had spent hundreds of millions to strengthen the squad. No one accused them but everyone pointed their fingers at Moyes.

In the game against Fulham, we conceded an early goal and the opposition started parking the bus. What's the problem of piling in crosses? Fact was we created plenty of chances with that tactic and we successfully turned the game around, it's Vidic's mistake that costed us the late goal but no one mentioned because he's a legend to the club.
 

tenpoless

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Moyes is the most clueless ManUnited manager. He's simply the worst.
So out of depth, no top players wanted to play for him, fell out with the squad, trying to turn United to Everton, paying premium prices for shit players, turning a Champion into a joke. And if those don't convince you look at where He worked after and How He did. Yes, still fecking shite, bitter towards Utd and delusional.

The difference between him and the rest was that He inherited a Champion and still managed to feck it up spectacularly.
 
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Paul_Scholes18

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van Gaal, Mourinho and Ole all asked the team to put loads of crosses into the box when we struggled to break a smaller side, despite they had spent hundreds of millions to strengthen the squad. No one accused them but everyone pointed their fingers at Moyes.

In the game against Fulham, we conceded an early goal and the opposition started parking the bus. What's the problem of piling in crosses? Fact was we created plenty of chances with that tactic and we successfully turned the game around, it's Vidic's mistake that costed us the late goal but no one mentioned because he's a legend to the club.
Yeah it is silly to just point towards that game. The tactic didn't fully fail as we scored two goals.
The strange thing was that we didn't use it with Fellaini much under Moyes. Never understood the idea Moyes had with him.
 

Antisocial

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The absolute best thing you can say in Moyes’ favour is that it was the club’s fault appointing him.
 
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el3mel

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I honestly prefer to move on and focus on our future rather than talking about past years with their positives and negatives.
 

crossy1686

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David Moyes, master tactician B-

Rio Ferdinand has issued a withering attack on David Moyes' short spell at Manchester United, describing the Scot as an amateurish manager with a small club mentality, and savaging his tactical approach and the decision to ban pre-match chips for players.
In the most candid assessment to date of Moyes' ten months at Old Trafford, Ferdinand ridiculed his decision to prepare for a match against Bayern Munich by rehearsing set-pieces in a public park. He also claimed Moyes chose to betray United's proud tradition of wing play by instead relying on hopeful diagonal punts.

He wrote: “Moyes’s innovations mostly led to negativity and confusion. The biggest confusion was over how he wanted us to move the ball forward. Some players felt they kicked the ball long more than at any time in their career.

“Sometimes our main tactic was the long, high, diagonal cross. It was embarrassing. In one home game against Fulham we had 81 crosses! I was thinking, why are we doing this? Andy Carroll doesn’t play for us!

“The whole approach was alien. Other times Moyes wanted lots of passing. He’d say: 'Today I want us to have 600 passes in the game. Last week it was only 400’. Who cares? I’d rather score five goals from 10 passes.”