Moyes vs van Gaal vs Mourinho - A Retrospective Review

[hmchan]

Since Fergie's retirement, we have been struggling to find an appropriate manager who could lead us to glory. Moyes, van Gaal and Mourinho all had a period of good time here, but eventually people only remember their poor run of form which led to their sacking. Now that they'd been all gone, I think it's time to give them a fair evaluation. Here, I'm trying to assess their overall performance at United and measure their long term impact to the club retrospectively.

David Moyes - The Chosen One

It's actually kind of funny to say Moyes was "the chosen one", given that multiple reports suggested he wasn't the first choice. He took charge in summer 2013 and the decision to get rid of all the coaching staffs was quite a debate. People argued that original coaching staffs like Phelan could be useful to the team, but it's also common for a manager to bring in his own team. He had to work with the inexperienced Woodward in the transfer windows, which were widely considered as a failure but in fact Fellaini and Mata were proven to be useful to the following managers, at least as a squad player.

Moyes started the season with a 4:1 victory against Swansea, but then we lost to Liverpool, City and West Brom. After that we had interchanging periods of bad (late November to early December) and good (Christmas) times, and we were consistent in the 6th to 7th position. He was sacked after the defeat to Everton, which confirmed that we lost our Champions League spot. Nonetheless, we finished with 64 points, which were similar to many post-Fergie seasons besides the 81 points we got in 17/18.

Being the immediate successor of Fergie, he was under a great deal of pressure, and many of the criticisms were unwarranted and unreasonable. For example, people put all the blame on him for the downfall of the club, without acknowledging the limitaiton of the squad and the decline of our key players; people teased him for crossing from time to time, but it'd been one of the major tactics we used down the years. He cleared the deadwoods like Vidic, Ferdinand and Evra but few mentioned because they were legends to the club. I feel for him in many ways.

Louis van Gaal - The Disastrous One

Following Dutch's success in the 2014 World Cup, many United fans had high hopes in van Gaal. However, things didn't go as smoothly as expected and we only claimed 5 points in the first 5 games. He seemed to adopt the "trial and error" policy and struggled to find a consistent formation throughout the season. We were heavily dependent on individual brilliance from Martial, Smalling and de Gea. We got more points from stronger sides but we also lost more points to the weaker sides as compared to the previous season.

van Gaal slammed United for failing to buy his transfer targets a few days ago, despite he spent almost 300m on a series of flops. The likes of Blind and Darmian never looked suitable to the Premier League, while the recruitment of Falcao, Schweinsteiger and Valdes were clueless. Depay and Schneiderlin didn't have the required quality. di Maria was one of the few top class players we had bought in recent years, but he had a fallout with him forcing him to leave.

The most disastrous thing about van Gaal, however, was his youth policy. He kept the squad really small claiming to develop youngsters, but what he's actually doing was just handing debuts to a pile of immature players. He had no idea about who had the higher potential, so he just handed debuts to all of them and hoped they'd success one day despite they're not ready. On the RB he tried Varela, McNair, Janko, Love, Riley and Fosu-Mensah, a total of 6 options in the same position. He dropped McNair after calling him our RB for the next 10 years.

Many credited van Gaal for Rashford's breakthrough, but it's no more than a coincidence as he originally wanted Wilson as our backup striker. He destroyed the career of many youngsters, and he did more harm than good by keeping the squad thin. We were deficient in quantity let alone quality in many positions, and we lacked players who were in their prime years. This made the job impossible for whoever was taking over and picking up the mess for him.

Jose Mourinho - The Special One

Considering the mess left by van Gaal, Mourinho did a pretty good job in his first season at United. Pogba, Ibrahimovic and Bailly all provided instant impacts to the team, while only Mkhitaryan struggled. His ability in big match preparation brought us 3 titles (including the Community Shield) in a season, which was pretty rare in the post-Fergie era. We also improved in the league in terms of points, goals for and against. However, Ibrahimovic's cruiciate ligmanet injury late in the season provided uncertainty to the team.

Going into the second season, Mourinho introduced Lindelof, Matic as an upgrade to Herrera, and Lukaku as a replacement for Ibrahimovic. These signings were questionable to say the least. On one hand we finished 2nd in the league with 81 points only behind the unplayable City team, but on the other hand we were disappointing in the cup games. We were knocked out by Sevilla and Bristol City in the Champions League and EFL Cup respectively.

In the third season things got out of control. The saga between Mourinho and Pogba was hugely intensified by the media especially when the team wasn't performing. The frequent switch in formation indicated that things didn't go as planned and Mourinho needed some desperate moves to rescue his job. Nonetheless, we still failed to register a win against the rest of the big 6 and the defeat to Liverpool got him sacked in December.

	Tactic	Result	Transfer	Youth	Man Management	Heritage	Rank
Moyes​	B-​	C​	B-​	C+​	C-​	B​	2​
van Gaal​	C​	C+​	C-​	D​	D​	D​	3​
Mourinho​	B-​	B​	C+​	C+​	D+​	C+​	1​

 

[izec]

You are overrating Moyes massively.

Tactic, Transfer and Heritage the best out of the three

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.

 

[Maluco]

You are overrating Moyes massively.

Tactic, Transfer and Heritage the best out of the three

Seriously. He had the best starting position, all of the key staff, experienced premier league winners in his squad and a chance to come in and add to what was already a very good squad.

He completely messed it up by being arrogant and dithering over targets. You could write a book on all the stupid things he did in his brief time at the club.

He was awful and destroyed any legacy left by Ferguson in a matter of months. He is by far the biggest reason that we are where we are. Look at his CV and look at the CV of the other two. Sometimes the correct answers are the simplest ones. This is the equivalent of Pardew at the Bernabeu.

The other two won trophies from a worse starting position and had good records against the big teams, at the very least.

If the grading scale was an English football pyramid, Mourinho and Van Gaal get a League One. Moyes is a pub game on a Sunday morning.

 

[Sandikan]

Imagine rating Moyes better than others on anything.

He picked up champions and turned them into 7th.

Still beggars belief even this far on.
I'm convinced anyone on this forum couldn't have done worse unless purposely trying to hijack us.

 

[Dirty Schwein]

Moyes told Rio to think about "what Jagielka would do"

That in itself was the biggest crime!

 

[SirAF]

Moyes told Rio to think about "what Jagielka would do"

That in itself was the biggest crime!

Rio actually recently debunked that one! Doesn’t make Moyes any less shit though.

 

[Yagami]

The heat here in Manchester is taking it's toll on me so I'll take the lazy route and echo everyone else. Moyes was the absolute worst.

 

[Charlie Foley]

Absolute Moyes of a thread, this. Bollocks

 

[Paul_Scholes18]

I don't think Moyes left great heritage for the others. It was SAF that did for him and he didn't really improve on things.
I think LVG was the worst to watch although we won the Fa cup so results were better than under Moyes.
Still we failed big time in the CL under LVG and we did alright under Moyes.

 

[fps]

Your ratings and evaluation of Moyes are utterly heinous.

 

[Hugh Jass]

I personally think Van Gaal should have got the third year.

I think it was a huge mistake to go from Van Gaal tactics to Mourinho tactics.

 

[Buster15]

Moyes told Rio to think about "what Jagielka would do"

That in itself was the biggest crime!

I thought that had been denied.

 

[Nikelesh Reddy]

Moyes was definitely the worst out of the 3,it’s not even close....I still can’t get my head around the fact that he was even considered for the job.LVG and Mourinho ultimately flattered to deceive and didn’t fulfill the expectations,but Moyes was comfortably the worst...

 

[The Midnight Rambler]

Must be some heavy stuff being smoked for anyone to rate Moyes above Van Gaal.

 

[sullydnl]

Rating Moyes as the best of the three is weird. He is pretty comfortably the worst manager of the three and that was reflected in his time here.

Saying that LVG's youth policy was the most disastrous thing about his reign is also odd. As indeed is saying that Mourinho's approach to youth was better.

Not at all convinced Mourinho's man management was better than LVG's either given the toxicity that was present at the club by the time he left. LVG at least still had the team responsive enough to bow out winning a trophy.

Also, a B- for Moyes when it comes to tactics? Really?

Basically the more I look at that OP the more I see that's wrong.

 

[paulscholes18]

How is LVG so low for youth? How many debuts did he give out. Jose in his 2nd season don’t think he gave anyone a debut

 

[siw2007]

Some fair points but I agree with a lot of the other posters that Moyes was the worst of the lot. His short lived reign as United boss was an absolute car crash, admittedly not just by him. I will give him the benefit of the doubt in the sense that the United team he inherited was old, should have been ripped up years ago and blatantly over performed the year before but we shouldn't have gone down to 7th place. His organisation of the team was poor (tactically it was outdated), his dealing with star players was poor (his handling of Van Persie's fitness was amateur). Funny thing is, if he kept on Phelan and Maulensteen for the year, he might have lasted as he would have realised what it takes to work with a top football team with big characters, and it might have humbled him a bit, he then might have thought twice about populating the bench with his own staff.

In total contradiction, I actually liked Van Gaal. Out of the three, he is the one who actually had a vision on how he wanted the team to play, which in theory was quite exciting, unfortunately in practice it wasn't right. Tactically, I thought he was superb at preparing the team for the big games, in his time he beat City home and away, did the double of Liverpool twice including what I felt was our best performance at Anfield for a long time, he also won us our first FA cup in 12 years. Unfortunately, he was past his prime when we got him, his style of football, though in principle made sense, it was too dogmatic, as much as I believe a team should be organised on and off the ball, when you have the ball in he final third of the pitch, there has to be an element of intuition in which I don't think he got. But what was worst was the transfer strategy, when you consider the players bought and sold in his tenure, we got very little for our money apart from a few names. But even by some luck, I will always give him his due for bringing through Rashford, who for me represents what a United player is about and has become the face of the club.

Mourinho had quite a mixed first 18 months but had largely been successful. Trouble was always brewing as the style of play was lacklustre, he bought in a number of high profile players and the product on the pitch just wasn't worth the money spent. It went downhill as soon as Alexis was signed and his reign spiralled out of control post Sevilla, still one of the worst performances I have seen in a United shirt considering the talent we put out. There's been plenty of threads discussing what has happened to him, but for me he was a grouchy old man as opposed to the brash and inspiring young man when he started.

 

[Inigo Montoya]

I'd like to know what Moyes has achieved bar The Community Shield to rate him above LVG?

LVG even does comedy falls better

 

[mshnsh]

Seriously. He had the best starting position, all of the key staff, experienced premier league winners in his squad and a chance to come in and add to what was already a very good squad.

He completely messed it up by being arrogant and dithering over targets. You could write a book on all the stupid things he did in his brief time at the club.

He was awful and destroyed any legacy left by Ferguson in a matter of months. He is by far the biggest reason that we are where we are. Look at his CV and look at the CV of the other two. Sometimes the correct answers are the simplest ones. This is the equivalent of Pardew at the Bernabeu.

The other two won trophies from a worse starting position and had good records against the big teams, at the very least.

If the grading scale was an English football pyramid, Mourinho and Van Gaal get a League One. Moyes is a pub game on a Sunday morning.

This

 

[Tel074]

I personally think Van Gaal should have got the third year.

I think it was a huge mistake to go from Van Gaal tactics to Mourinho tactics.

I agree that we made a mistake going from LVG to Mourinho but for me LVG went at the right time . Never in my life have I been as bored watching football I was getting to the stage sat at OT I was hoping the away team would score just to see a goal and hoping it would shock us into actually attacking

 

[Paul_Scholes18]

I'd like to know what Moyes has achieved bar The Community Shield to rate him above LVG?

LVG even does comedy falls better

It is more that Moyes tried to go on with SAFs team and 4-4-2 tactics. He didn't change much beyond failing to get the results.
LVG destroyed the team and tried to build his own squad which he failed with big time. Got lucky with Rashford due to injuries.

The football under LVG and results were pretty bad too. He got saved by a good run in the Fa cup to give us a title under him.

 

[Champagne Football]

Moyes was an unmitigated disaster for 2 reasons.
1. He sacked Fergies backroom team and replaced them with midtable mediocrity.
2. He ended the policy of trying to sign the worlds best young exciting players, and instead went for safe bet proven PL players who were not Man Utd quality.

In regards to Van Gaal - He failed to understand the culture of the club. That you need to sign some homegrown Brittish young talent as well as foreign. He failed to realize the physicality of the Premier league, and the fact he chose Daley Blind over Van Dijk as a center back, despite both of them costing the same amount, shows he was living on a different planet to everyone else. He had some mad prehistoric philosophy that the foreign players he bought had to have some special passing skills even though it turned out they were worse than the players he got rid of. I would say he's Man Utds worst ever manager in the history of the club (considering he had an open checkbook) even though he had some success at other clubs.

Jose - A spoiled child with an ego too big for the club who brought methods that were the opposite to the traditions of the club and opposite to what the fans demanded.

 

[Mindhunter]

People blaming Moyes are clueless. He never had that x-factor and had completely stagnated at Everton. He was always doomed to fail here and I wouldn't blame him for actually believing in his own hype and taking the job. Do you expect the guy to write himself off?

Our foolish owners led themselves to believe that "stagnation" was stability, albeit at a slightly higher level that allows them to blow the trumpet of ambition to the fans and at the same time maximize the cost-benefit ratio of the club. Investing hundreds of millions of dollars for a slightly marginal bump in revenues on account of winning silverware is against the very DNA of an institution that is run for profit. For every dollar spent, they want maximum returns which would be around the 3rd and 4th place positions.

The drop down the precipice that followed jolted them into action as the core asset itself was being devalued.

 

[rotherham_red]

My views on the respective reigns haven't changed since the last time I considered them:

Pity for Moyes, who was clearly out of his depth, and the players largely blameless.

Pity for LvG to a certain extent as well, but he didn't by half make it hard for himself spunking so much money up the wall, and implementing a diabolically bad brand of football, even if I was willing him to succeed to the very last second. He also seemingly lacked a coherent and cogent long-, mid-, or even short-term plan with loads of kids being played en masse, many of whom up to that point never looked like potential Utd first-team players and haven't confounded expectation since. However, that tactic did seem to work, in the sense that it got a lot of potential detractors off his back. The players' conduct here was also a notable issue, with seemingly quite a few of them being pricks to someone who at his core, seemed a thoroughly decent man.

Jose: a cnut. Simple as. Spent poorly, and deployed the resources he had even more poorly - wasting two years of Rashford and Martial's development was unforgivable for me, and Matic was only just starting to turn in to a player after Ole's management of him. Absolutely colossal dereliction of his duty in his last year here, which pretty much cancelled out those two trophies he won in his first season here for me. He seemed to give up all pretence of playing good football by around the month of March in his first season and we never got it back even when he spent the best part of 180m in his second summer. Disgusting and total abdication of responsibility after his embarrassing Sevilla exit. feck him, and I hope we never see or hear from him again when he inevitably fecks up at Spurs.

 

[Man of Leisure]

That clueless clown Moyes was comfortably the worst outta the three.

 

[Paul_Scholes18]

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.

 

[Maluco]

People blaming Moyes are clueless. He never had that x-factor and had completely stagnated at Everton. He was always doomed to fail here and I wouldn't blame him for actually believing in his own hype and taking the job. Do you expect the guy to write himself off?

Our foolish owners led themselves to believe that "stagnation" was stability, albeit at a slightly higher level that allows them to blow the trumpet of ambition to the fans and at the same time maximize the cost-benefit ratio of the club. Investing hundreds of millions of dollars for a slightly marginal bump in revenues on account of winning silverware is against the very DNA of an institution that is run for profit. For every dollar spent, they want maximum returns which would be around the 3rd and 4th place positions.

The drop down the precipice that followed jolted them into action as the core asset itself was being devalued.

No, that doesn’t fly at all. He might not be totally blameless, but some of his decisions reeked of arrogance. You don’t need to write yourself off, but don’t sack the staff who can help and assist and give you a foundation with which to give yourself the best possible chance.

He doesn’t get off with stupid decisions and stupid buys just because he “couldn’t say no”. He set the club back years because he thought he could do it himself. If he had been humble and come in ready to learn and lean on those around him, it could have been a very different story.

He was idiotic and his stupid comments since then have just confirmed that he still overrates himself in the extreme and has failed to learn anything from his experience.

The owners were foolish and naive, but Moyes was arrogant and destructive, and that to me is far worse.

 

[AshRK]

Sorry to say but anyone rating moyes above than van gaal cannot be taken seriously. The guy was given a kingdom and turned that into a waste management. No one expected him to win the league again in his first season but to just build something for future by finishing in top 3. He was a disaster. His transfer dealing and his targets showed he always wanted to be a everton man. Yes Woodward is to be blamed but the fact that he was hell bent on signing fellaini was strange and then his training methods from what we have heard were terrible.

So coming to your post I would say Moyes was the worst thing to happen to us.

Van gaal was very rigid and lost any direction he had after his 5-3 loss to Leicester. His transfer dealing were equally terrible.

Jose was chosen to manage us at a wrong time. It should have been who should have succeeded SAF. But having said I cannot have any sympathy with him for the way he was behaving since the loss to Sevilla.

 

[Park's Petrified Pooch]

Mourinho was a ride, overall I enjoyed it, but it was always going to be short. I hated Moyes. Clueless, dour, inadequate, and the football was shite to boot. Van Gaal was the worst. I wanted to enjoy it, I quite enjoyed his lunatic personality, but his reign was the only time in 40 years that I’ve stopped watching United. He made me stop loving football.

 

[MalcolmTucker]

For all of LVG's complaining about buying the 7th best players on his transfer list - wasn't it confirmed by Kroos that he was ready to go to United before LVG arrived only for Van Gaal to cancel the transfer?

 

[Bebestation]

1. I hate Jose - but it should have been Jose straight after SAF. Give him the ability to win as much as he can with an already ageing squad.

2. LVG should have come afterwards as a build up for a manager like Ole to take over - a bit like how he was setting up for Giggs to take over. LVG taking over Jose's ageing squad makes more sense than Jose taking over whatever LVG tries to do.

3. Ole comes in (or the United home grown manager) and looks at the squad and the previous managers mistakes and tries to build accordingly ( a very brief analysis).

Moyes is the only one that doesnt fit for me & we should have swapped the Jose and LVG times around.

 

[wolvored]

Playing devils advocate Moyes was the worst signing by Woody. Woody was inexperienced and maybe was led by Fergie, who only picked him as third/fourth choice if reports are to be believed. Woody wrongly believed, especially as VG had taken the Dutch to the WC semi final, that VG would improve us. Then when it went tits up and Mourinho was available, it was a no brainer. He would surely win us the league before he self destructed, but it didnt turn out like that. How the OP gives Moyes B's and C's is beyond me. F's would be about right. It probably would have worked out better if Mourinho had have came instead of Moyes as he probably won the league again in the first season.
Im hoping that finally we have got it right with Ole. Since we got Bruno it appears we are finally on the right path.

 

[Baneofthegame]

Moyes wasted the opportunity to make our squad better by buying just Fellaini when we needed at least 3/4 players and was using small club tactics for the reigning premier league champions.

LVG was awful in the transfer market.

Mourinho refused to adapt which led to his own demise.

 

[SweetRightFoot]

Mourihno > Van Gaal > Moyes

In results, transfers, man management, coaching, everything.

 

[harms]

Since Fergie's retirement, we have been struggling to find an appropriate manager who could lead us to glory. Moyes, van Gaal and Mourinho all had a period of good time here, but eventually people only remember their poor run of form which led to their sacking. Now that they'd been all gone, I think it's time to give them a fair evaluation. Here, I'm trying to assess their overall performance at United and measure their long term impact to the club retrospectively.

David Moyes - The Chosen One

It's actually kind of funny to say Moyes was "the chosen one", given that multiple reports suggested he wasn't the first choice. He took charge in summer 2013 and the decision to get rid of all the coaching staffs was quite a debate. People argued that original coaching staffs like Phelan could be useful to the team, but it's also common for a manager to bring in his own team. He had to work with the inexperienced Woodward in the transfer windows, which were widely considered as a failure but in fact Fellaini and Mata were proven to be useful to the following managers, at least as a squad player.

Moyes started the season with a 4:1 victory against Swansea, but then we lost to Liverpool, City and West Brom. After that we had interchanging periods of bad (late November to early December) and good (Christmas) times, and we were consistent in the 6th to 7th position. He was sacked after the defeat to Everton, which confirmed that we lost our Champions League spot. Nonetheless, we finished with 64 points, which were similar to many post-Fergie seasons besides the 81 points we got in 17/18.

Being the immediate successor of Fergie, he was under a great deal of pressure, and many of the criticisms were unwarranted and unreasonable. For example, people put all the blame on him for the downfall of the club, without acknowledging the limitaiton of the squad and the decline of our key players; people teased him for crossing from time to time, but it'd been one of the major tactics we used down the years. He cleared the deadwoods like Vidic, Ferdinand and Evra but few mentioned because they were legends to the club. I feel for him in many ways.

Louis van Gaal - The Disastrous One

Following Dutch's success in the 2014 World Cup, many United fans had high hopes in van Gaal. However, things didn't go as smoothly as expected and we only claimed 5 points in the first 5 games. He seemed to adopt the "trial and error" policy and struggled to find a consistent formation throughout the season. We were heavily dependent on individual brilliance from Martial, Smalling and de Gea. We got more points from stronger sides but we also lost more points to the weaker sides as compared to the previous season.

van Gaal slammed United for failing to buy his transfer targets a few days ago, despite he spent almost 300m on a series of flops. The likes of Blind and Darmian never looked suitable to the Premier League, while the recruitment of Falcao, Schweinsteiger and Valdes were clueless. Depay and Schneiderlin didn't have the required quality. di Maria was one of the few top class players we had bought in recent years, but he had a fallout with him forcing him to leave.

The most disastrous thing about van Gaal, however, was his youth policy. He kept the squad really small claiming to develop youngsters, but what he's actually doing was just handing debuts to a pile of immature players. He had no idea about who had the higher potential, so he just handed debuts to all of them and hoped they'd success one day despite they're not ready. On the RB he tried Varela, McNair, Janko, Love, Riley and Fosu-Mensah, a total of 6 options in the same position. He dropped McNair after calling him our RB for the next 10 years.

Many credited van Gaal for Rashford's breakthrough, but it's no more than a coincidence as he originally wanted Wilson as our backup striker. He destroyed the career of many youngsters, and he did more harm than good by keeping the squad thin. We were deficient in quantity let alone quality in many positions, and we lacked players who were in their prime years. This made the job impossible for whoever was taking over and picking up the mess for him.

Jose Mourinho - The Special One

Considering the mess left by van Gaal, Mourinho did a pretty good job in his first season at United. Pogba, Ibrahimovic and Bailly all provided instant impacts to the team, while only Mkhitaryan struggled. His ability in big match preparation brought us 3 titles (including the Community Shield) in a season, which was pretty rare in the post-Fergie era. We also improved in the league in terms of points, goals for and against. However, Ibrahimovic's cruiciate ligmanet injury late in the season provided uncertainty to the team.

Going into the second season, Mourinho introduced Lindelof, Matic as an upgrade to Herrera, and Lukaku as a replacement for Ibrahimovic. These signings were questionable to say the least. On one hand we finished 2nd in the league with 81 points only behind the unplayable City team, but on the other hand we were disappointing in the cup games. We were knocked out by Sevilla and Bristol City in the Champions League and EFL Cup respectively.

In the third season things got out of control. The saga between Mourinho and Pogba was hugely intensified by the media especially when the team wasn't performing. The frequent switch in formation indicated that things didn't go as planned and Mourinho needed some desperate moves to rescue his job. Nonetheless, we still failed to register a win against the rest of the big 6 and the defeat to Liverpool got him sacked in December.

	Tactic	Result	Transfer	Youth	Man Management	Heritage	Rank
Moyes​	B-​	C​	B-​	C+​	C-​	B​	2​
van Gaal​	C​	C+​	C-​	D​	D​	D​	3​
Mourinho​	B-​	B​	C+​	C+​	D+​	C+​	1​

This is absurd. Moyes was clueless tactically and he had lost the squad as fast as any possible can with his Jagielka videos and general ineptness — how exactly is he better than both van Gaal and Mourinho at man-management Would any player that played under Moyes say that he was happy with that experience?

Heritage. What fecking heritage? 2 minutes of happiness after Evra's goal?

1. Mourinho. Started off well but everything fell apart at the end
2. Van Gaal. Had some good ideas but was too rigid for this job

That's it, that's the list.

Rant over.

 

[harms]

It is more that Moyes tried to go on with SAFs team and 4-4-2 tactics. He didn't change much beyond failing to get the results.

Tactics and formation aren't synonymous. Moyes had different tactics than Fergie did — and his failed miserably.

 

[harms]

People blaming Moyes are clueless. He never had that x-factor and had completely stagnated at Everton. He was always doomed to fail here and I wouldn't blame him for actually believing in his own hype and taking the job. Do you expect the guy to write himself off?

Him failing doesn't take away any of the blame from the owners. Him destroying everything he had touched starting with dismissing Fergie's coaching stuff is on him.

 

[anant]

LVG>Moyes>Mou for me

LVG was arguably the best among the three even though his transfers were hit and miss and we played dull football in his 2nd year. Tactically, he was pretty good - our record against good sides was top notch. He gave debuts to quite a lot of youngsters which is always appreciated. Those 4-6 games towards the end of his 1st season was fantastic football. However, we did rely on Dave quite a lot in those 2 seasons and we were clueless in the final third. Additionally, he lost faith in systems or in his words 'philosophies' way too quickly. 3-5-2 was ditched after the Leicester defeat, long ball was ditched after Allardyce pointed in out, that pressing football that led to us to wins vs Spurs, City and Pool was ditched after loss vs Chelsea and so on.

Moyes for me comes second and solely because I believe Mou did more damage to the club. I don't think he was ever up for the job and I do acknowledge that anyone coming in after Fergie would have struggled as anyone could see that our side just wasn't that good. It was only after that disastrous when we realized Fergie was getting probably 15-20 points more from that group of players. His transfers, while safe, worked out which cannot be said of Mou or LVG. I do believe he was unlucky as Pool, City, Chelsea and Arsenal all had fantastic seasons, and Everton and Spurs also enjoyed among their best seasons in terms of points won in PL era. However, finishing 7th is still no excuse for a side that finished as champions the year before. He shouldn't have sacked that backroom staff and tactically, we lacked a plan B

Mou should ideally go down as among our worst managers ever. Sure, he won trophies, however, he never understood the club, what it is about and in general failed to adapt. He remained a cnut for the entirety of his tenure - dissing youth and senior players in pressers, throwing tantrums in public, making differences between him and Woody public and creating a dark environment around the club. The football we played was shite under him, and we parked the bus against every decent side. The transfers mostly turned out duds and we're still paying for some of his mistakes - Alexis! Zlatan, while turning out to be a success shouldn't have been signed, especially as we were under transition and stop gaps just lengthen that transiition period. On the results front - we were guided by a superhuman season by Dave in which we finished 2nd. In the other 2 seasons, we weren't/didn't end up in a CL position. Trophies- I'd hand it to him that we won the LC and EL (tbf our run to the final was quite easy and his defensive tactics vs Celta almost led to our elimination) under him and that was the only positive thing about his tenure

 

[chb23]

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

 

[Tom Van Persie]

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.