What happened to David Moyes?
Around this time four years ago, the Scot had just signed a six-year deal to become Sir Alex Ferguson’s successor at Manchester United. It was the biggest job in the history of soccer, the chance to build on top of the sport’s greatest ever dynasty.
Now, he is without a job having relegated Sunderland.
The decline of Moyes has been astounding, with the Scot now considered damaged goods beyond repair by some. Sunderland should have been a shot at redemption, but instead it served only to indict him more.
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It seems unlikely that he will ever work in the Premier League again, meaning he will have to drop down to Championship level or maybe even return to Scotland to piece together his reputation.
But while Moyes has only fallen further since his Manchester United nadir, another manager has recovered from a harrowing managerial experience of his own, only to similarly depart his post this week, too. Sam Allardyce stepped down as Crystal Palace manager after saving the club from the drop, going some way to underlining his quality after a difficult 12 months.
It’s been a hectic year for Allardyce. Only last summer, he was named manager of the England national team, taking over from Roy Hodgson after the European Championships. Allardyce was seen as the man to get England back to basics, but he lasted just a matter of weeks, taking charge of just one competitive game, after a tabloid scandal.
Having built up to that job his entire career, Allardyce was widely expected to take some time out from the game, but instead he took charge of a Palace team in freefall and headed for relegation under Alan Pardew. There, he reinforced his status as a go-to guy for teams in trouble. He’s been that same guy for over a decade now, never suffering relegation as a manager.
Contrast this to Moyes, who now finds trouble wherever he goes. Unlike Allardyce, the Scot has simply failed to adapt to the modern game around him. That was brutally exposed at Manchester United in particular, where his tactics of simply asking wingers to cross the ball into the opposition box as often as possible were derided. Even after that, he still hasn’t got the message at Real Sociedad and Sunderland. He is a relic of a bygone age.
It’s not just Moyes’ tactics on the pitch that are a problem, but his public persona through the media. Just two games into the 2016-17 season, he admitted that Sunderland would be up against the drop.
“[The bottom of the table] is where they’ve been every other year for the past four years, so why would it suddenly change?” he pondered, only serving to knock down whatever confidence his players had.
At Manchester United, Moyes told journalists that the Old Trafford club should “aspire” to get to Manchester City, despite United being defending Premier League champions at the time. At Real Sociedad, the Scot complained about the depth of his squad, tempering expectations. La Real just finished the 2016-17 season not far short of the Champions League places with largely the same squad Moyes had at his disposal.
At best, Moyes is a pragmatic. At worst, he is a defeatist, and what club wants a defeatist as manager?
Where Moyes goes from here, it’s difficult to envisage. Like Allardyce, he could take some time off from soccer, allowing things to settle before making his next move. But that’s where the similarities between the two men end. Allardyce is the anti-Moyes and Moyes is the anti-Allardyce. It just so happens that their futures have intertwined this week.
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