Everton level is still a good level though. Not good enough for us, but still a high level.
Moyes vs van Gaal vs Mourinho - A Retrospective Review
- Thread starter hmchan
- Start date
My ratings would be.
Results 1 Mourinho, 2 Van Gaal, 3 Moyes
Performances 1 Mourinho, 2 Moyes, 3 Van Gaal
Transfers 1 Mourinho, 2 Moyes, 3 LVG
Foundations 1 Mourinho, 2 Moyes, 3 LVG
Results 1 Mourinho, 2 Van Gaal, 3 Moyes
Performances 1 Mourinho, 2 Moyes, 3 Van Gaal
Transfers 1 Mourinho, 2 Moyes, 3 LVG
Foundations 1 Mourinho, 2 Moyes, 3 LVG
And consider the levels LVG and Jose have operated at. Both were the wrong appointments, and well past their best. However Moyes’ best was mid table obscurity.
Just answered to the point of him beng for a small club. It is hard to know what his best would be, but he was not a top winner. He would probably taken us to top 4 if given another season. Doubt he would do more than that. I guess if every player wanted to leave him that would be a big problem too.
Imo, all of them apart from Ole understood that signing young players and make them into superstars is the United way.
Moyes tried to sign superstars and failed. He should've signed wonderkids instead to build a new squad.
LVG brought Falcao and Di Maria, plus his dutch signings are woeful.
Mourinho is the epitome of what's wrong with our spendings for the last few years.
Moyes tried to sign superstars and failed. He should've signed wonderkids instead to build a new squad.
LVG brought Falcao and Di Maria, plus his dutch signings are woeful.
Mourinho is the epitome of what's wrong with our spendings for the last few years.
Moyes was the worst thing that has happened in this club the last 40 years. We became a souless, spineless team. I can't believe that someone even said that he won more titles on average 
I dislike Mourinho, however I have to admit that the first and half year was quite enjoyable and promising. 2016-2017 is our best third season in the decade for me after 2011 and 2013. However, after Sevilla it was a hell indeed.
Lets hope, if the season restarts, that we can win the EL and finish 4th, so making a strong ending in the decade.
I dislike Mourinho, however I have to admit that the first and half year was quite enjoyable and promising. 2016-2017 is our best third season in the decade for me after 2011 and 2013. However, after Sevilla it was a hell indeed.
Lets hope, if the season restarts, that we can win the EL and finish 4th, so making a strong ending in the decade.
One of the biggest muppet OP posts I've read in a long time.
rubbish.
no matter how much of a cluster the Jose era turned out to be, he brought in Zlatan, developed McT and won the EL and League Cup.
redeeming features in the Moyes era were...
... most amount of crosses in a PL match to draw with Fulham. It’s not even close.
How can you give van gaal a D for youth?
If I live for another 50 years I still don’t think I’ll have gotten over the fact we picked David Moyes to replace Sir Alex. He destroyed two decades of work in his brief time here, did absolutely everything wrong in every department. The appointment will haunt me til the end of my days.
How did he ruin everything? We had the same squad when he left and a desire for revenge. Removing staff was a big blow, but it didn't ruin everything.
Moyes dynamited the foundations, LVG went around and chucked whatever was left in the sinkhole and Mourinho concreted it over. Ole is a survivor going around trying to glue everything back together with no architectural or building knowledge.
Brilliant.
Under Van Gaal we payed some fantastic stuff at times. The 1-2 win at Anfield and the 4-2 at Old Trafford against City. He was just far to stubborn and that’s what’s cost him.
Love Mourinho or hate him 2 trophies, another final, 2nd place and qualifying for the CL twice in his two full seasons is decent.
Compare that to David “Community Shield” Moyes who achieved the square root of feck all bar being the first United manager in over 30 years who failed to qualify for Europe and basically wasting a season of the clubs existence.
More like parked a bus on top of the ruins tbh.
Well that and trying to sell an entire squad and buy a new one in 18 months.
Moyes was disastrous. He didn't get enough time to change things, but by end of the season every single person on this planet who watch the game & pay attention on United in that season should realised that he just didn't suit the United's standard and style. The manager has no clue about United identity and his defensive approach wasn't suit with our expectation.
To make it big difference between him and the other two is that he inherited a title winning squad and he failed to take advantage of it to at least make it into top 4. If he had the same squad as LVG, I would say he wouldn't get some of his winnings. It's not coincidence that somehow Moyes was able to beat some lesser team with big score because the player were title winner previously, don't need good manager to beat Fulham & Swansea.
LVG was poor as well but at least he has his own system and the players don't suit his style. Beside, I think he needed Carrick to make it works and Carrick got injured in his first season, it's not coincidence that some of our best game among these three managers came from LVG against big team when Carrick actually in the team and I remember we have above 70% of winning percentage under LVG when Carrick actually played. In 2nd season, Carrick's leg is gone and LVG also got rid few players without replacing them properly.
All 3 were equally terrible IMO. Just in different ways.
Fellaini was suffering from injuries that season, plus I think Moyes didn't have the confidence to use him extensively. He tried to stick with the title winning team as much as possible, hoping they could produce magic and keep their mouth shut, especially when he was started questioning by the fans and the media. So I can't see why people think he's arrogant.
For example Welbeck was scoring goals for fun during Christmas, but he went back to the bench as soon as van Persie returned from injury. Ferdinand and Vidic were so poor that they kept making silly mistakes, and they had to retire soon after they left the club, but Moyes chose to stick with them instead of giving chances to the likes of Evans, Smalling and Jones.
To be honest I'm trying to convince myself that I've overrated Moyes, but I expect many more better arguments than what I've seen here. Many merely just state the fact that we've transformed from 1st to 7th, without considering any of the context, e.g. the rapid decline of those so-called experienced champion winners, injury crisis etc.
The only concrete point I see is that Moyes replaced the backroom staffs, which every manager would have done the same when they take over a new club. People hyped Phelan and Meulensteen so high to suit their agenda, but the fact that they didn't enjoy much success elsewhere suggested they weren't THAT good after all.
Mourinho > Moyes > LVG
In terms of how entertaining the brand of football was to watch. Also in terms of how good their transfers were.
In terms of how entertaining the brand of football was to watch. Also in terms of how good their transfers were.
LVG was the least worst of the three for me.
Couldn't stand Mourinho and detested Moyes
Couldn't stand Mourinho and detested Moyes
The funny thing about LvG's second season (OP's rerospective completely mixed his 2 seasons into one, Martial wasnt in the first year, Smalling wasn't consistently first choice either) is that it's the most sustained title challenge we have had since 2013, maybe equal to 2017.
The match against Leicester at the end of November November was 1st vs 2nd, with a 1 point gap, and ended in a draw. There hasn't been a season since then when we were so close to the top. And the season overall is correctly regarded as the worst. The Christmas football right after this was ridiculously bad, and I think this continued through January too. At that point I wanted him out. From 1 point off the top to absolutely useless in a month. I still don't know how things went wrong so fast that season.
The match against Leicester at the end of November November was 1st vs 2nd, with a 1 point gap, and ended in a draw. There hasn't been a season since then when we were so close to the top. And the season overall is correctly regarded as the worst. The Christmas football right after this was ridiculously bad, and I think this continued through January too. At that point I wanted him out. From 1 point off the top to absolutely useless in a month. I still don't know how things went wrong so fast that season.
Moyes - clueless, out of depth, turning champions into midtable minors. 4/10 (won charity shield)
LVG - outdated philosophy, uninspiring, boring 5/10 (won FA cup)
Mourinho - cnut, heavy spender, 3rd year disaster 6/10 (2nd place finish, won 2 trophies)
LVG - outdated philosophy, uninspiring, boring 5/10 (won FA cup)
Mourinho - cnut, heavy spender, 3rd year disaster 6/10 (2nd place finish, won 2 trophies)
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Moyes changed Fergi tactics. He might have kept your beloved 442 but underneath it everything has changed. He even gave Vidic a DVD of his favourite CB on how Vidic should have changed his game.....
Agree in all. Probably add 1 line to LVG's recruitment, total disaster considering how many remain to-date and some we are still struggling to get rid of.
I'm still to this day off the opinion getting rid of Van Gaal was a mistake,
yeah, the football wasn't great, though I prefered watching us pass the ball around than I did the give the opponents the ball and wait for them to make a mistake approach of Mourinho.
At least Van Gaal was trying to build something, he was bringing you players through, they were improving and you could see the beginnings of something even if we were 5th. switching from a possession-based manager, who like working with young players, to a manager who set up teams to function without the ball who prefers working with experienced players, was the biggest mistake we have made int the post Fergie era.
yeah, the football wasn't great, though I prefered watching us pass the ball around than I did the give the opponents the ball and wait for them to make a mistake approach of Mourinho.
At least Van Gaal was trying to build something, he was bringing you players through, they were improving and you could see the beginnings of something even if we were 5th. switching from a possession-based manager, who like working with young players, to a manager who set up teams to function without the ball who prefers working with experienced players, was the biggest mistake we have made int the post Fergie era.
They were all just a different shade of shit. If Ole doesn't work out we need to go for a manager in his absolute prime, because we haven't tried that yet.
I deliberately condensed the 2 seasons into 1 paragraph because there were so many more negative impacts brought from van Gaal which were more important and worth discussing. As stated in the OP, he struggled to find a consistent formation let alone personnels for us. So he's always doomed to fail and it's just a matter of time that our performance dropped at some point of the season.
Referring to the specific period you mentioned, we played a 3-5-2 against Leicester, then a 4-5-1 with Schneiderlin-Schweinsteiger-Fellaini in midfield against West Ham, then a 4-2-3-1 with a combination of Carrick-Fellaini-Mata against Bournemouth. How on earth were we supposed to get consistent results when we were not playing with a consistent formation and lineup? It's also worth to note that we had to use the likes of Borthwick-Jackson, McNair and Varela during that period, thanks to van Gaal's so-called youth policy.
No way was Van Gaal's 15/16 season a title challenge; we were out of it less than a month after the Leicester game you've mentioned. Mourinho's 17/18 was far closer to a title challenge than anything we had under Van Gaal (which is not a compliment for the record).
The football was dire in that second Van Gaal season even early on when we were getting decent results; it was inevitable that the wheels came off. Aside from Martial we basically had no attacking thrust or creativity.
We shouldn't downplay just how bad the football was under LVG.
There was a period in his 2nd season here where we must have been the dullest team in the entire country, we were regularly having 1 or 2 shots on target a game. Horrendous.
We should have let him enjoy winning the FA Cup for at least 24 hours but it was absolutely the right decision to sack him.
Mourinho started well and up to winning the League cup I thought we had played nice football all season but we just wasted chance after chance. Football gradually got worse after that and he should have been sacked after Sevilla, his press conference was disgraceful.
Moyes was complete shit from start to finish and it'll be difficult to see anyone ever being a shittier Utd manager than him.
There was a period in his 2nd season here where we must have been the dullest team in the entire country, we were regularly having 1 or 2 shots on target a game. Horrendous.
We should have let him enjoy winning the FA Cup for at least 24 hours but it was absolutely the right decision to sack him.
Mourinho started well and up to winning the League cup I thought we had played nice football all season but we just wasted chance after chance. Football gradually got worse after that and he should have been sacked after Sevilla, his press conference was disgraceful.
Moyes was complete shit from start to finish and it'll be difficult to see anyone ever being a shittier Utd manager than him.
To me it's also in terms of how less damage they did to the team.
Well yeah, Jose's transfers weren't great but the only ones who ultimately failed are Mkhitaryan, Lukaku and Sanchez, although Bailly and Dalot have question marks over their respective injury records. Pogba, Zlatan, Matic, Lindelof and Fred have all at the very least been decent signings, although they did all on average cost quite a bit. Zlatan of course was only ever going to be a short term kind of signing. Jose's tenure ended very toxically but at least he left us better off on paper than when he arrived.
LVGs signings...Shaw, Martial, Herrera and Romero, those guys are pretty much the only decent signings he made (Blind was half decent at centre back though, we managed to recoup the money for him). And LVG cleared out a lot of decent players arguably too quickly and cheaply in terms of transfer profits. His style didn't fit the club and his transfers targeted towards this style ultimately set us down a different path from "The United Way" whereby as a result a lot of damage was done long-term. LVG was the kind of manager who'd always opt to take the draw in a game that was level at the 80th minute, rather than go for the win and risk losing. This is why I think he was the most anti-United manager we've had in recent years in terms of him just simply not being a good fit for the club. Not through all his own fault because of aging players like Rooney, Carrick and RVP, but LVG definitely left us with a worse team than when he arrived imo, although I'm grateful for Rashford.
Moyes inherited a squad with some grandpas in it like Rio, Vidic and Evra, but both his signings were at the very least decent, and he didn't really impose a philosophy that set us back long-term like LVG did and arguably Jose. He did however get rid of all the backroom staff and coaches, which while understandable, really might have fecked us up a lot.
tldr: LVG is the only one whose style of play I actually think set us back, because its so different to 1. what we're used to at United and 2. what we want to see mentality-wise. In addition to his transfers being the poorest of the 3, this definitely makes his tenure the most damaging, I agree. As for the other two, well if Ed listened to Jose for every request of his (which in fairness he apparently didn't do with LVG either), then Martial and Pogba would have left and Perisic and Boateng would be at United. But he didn't so because Jose has left us with what I consider to be a pretty solid foundation, with Pogba, McTominay, Fred, Matic, etc, and he left us in the champions league still, I'd say he was the least damaging, considering Moyes was only there for a year. But really, because Moyes was only there for a year, its hard to really say his tenure was very damaging at all for United, except for the club's reputation as title contenders.
LVG is obviously the best of the 3. His transfers were awful but he set us up pretty well, always promoted youth, and players talk about him reasonably favourably.
Mourinho was past it, also a great manager but he couldn't get the team the way he wanted and caused a bad atmosphere, which are both his own failings.
Moyes is an afterthought. Our clubs biggest ever mistake that has set us back a decade at least. It's a shame we cant erase him from the history books.
Mourinho was past it, also a great manager but he couldn't get the team the way he wanted and caused a bad atmosphere, which are both his own failings.
Moyes is an afterthought. Our clubs biggest ever mistake that has set us back a decade at least. It's a shame we cant erase him from the history books.
LVG was the best in hindsight, simply because of his long-term focus. He also had the worst circumstances.
Moyes was easily the worst. No contest.
Moyes was easily the worst. No contest.
1. Mou 16/17 --- fun football and 2 trophies.
2. Mou 17/18 --- solid season (results only: 2nd place and FAC final).
3. LVG 14/15 --- promising football.
4. LVG 15/16 --- Fa Cup.
5. Moyes 13/14 --- bad.
6. Mou 18/19 --- pure rubbish, lost the plot.
2. Mou 17/18 --- solid season (results only: 2nd place and FAC final).
3. LVG 14/15 --- promising football.
4. LVG 15/16 --- Fa Cup.
5. Moyes 13/14 --- bad.
6. Mou 18/19 --- pure rubbish, lost the plot.
People talking about Jose's first season being good? Seriously? By Feb/March I had mentally checked out that season, it was soul sapping stuff. He won us those trophies, but I didn't enjoy the games anywhere near as much as I ordinarily would have.
Yes, seriously.
Zlatan, Pogba, Rashford, Herrera, Carrick and Bailly-Rojo. Having proper quality actual midfielders in midfield and two good ball-playing CBs are the two keys.
Curious which post-saf season(s) of the three managers you find it to be good but Okay.
Moyes was out of depth whose lack of experience in handling top players + his very basic tactics costed him first his dressing room then his job. LVG's plan made sense. He did us a huge favour of getting rid of the deadwood and his aim was to promote youths which he did. Unfortunately he didn't understood the EPL which meant that he filled us with players that were unsuited for the fast paced and physical EPL. Mou on the other hand understood the EPL but similarly to LVG he was on the wane when he signed for us. He is also a short term manager who comes in, he wins stuff and he then leaves with no care in the world of what he leaves behind.
United need a manager who understand the club, who builds for the future, whose a brilliant man manager and whose tactically savvy. Ole has the latter the three but I have doubts that if his tactical acumen is good enough.
United need a manager who understand the club, who builds for the future, whose a brilliant man manager and whose tactically savvy. Ole has the latter the three but I have doubts that if his tactical acumen is good enough.