Moyes?

So, I’m not going to jump straight on the Moyesout bandwagon here. Partly because there really is no room left to jump on. It would feel like trying to jump on a metro back into town after everyone else by walking up to Trafford Bar in order to avoid the queues. The person who tried to be clever and different, and just ends up arriving at the same place as everyone else, only later.

Instead, I thought I’d do an analysis of five key areas to Moyes’s tenure so far, and look into his methods and what they’ve accomplished. A sort of job review if you will, but with a positive spin. A defence of the seemingly indefensible. So here we are:

In game tactical changes – Moyes’s tactical changes and substitutions may seem complex and difficult to predict or analyze to the untrained eye, but they can be broken down somewhat using these two spinning “tactics wheels” pictured below. The first relating to tactical changes considered before the 80th minute mark:

and here tactical changes made on or after the 80th minute mark:

This variety of options allows Moyes to adapt his team to any scenario they might find themselves in. For example, if the team were to get to 80 minutes and there was a severe lack of Hernandez on the pitch, Moyes may resolve this by bringing on Hernandez. Alternatively, after 70 minutes the team might find themselves in desperate need of not bringing Hernandez on quite yet. Other options such as Zaha allow Moyes to maintain the element of surprise when, after 80 or more minutes, Hernandez is selected to come on ahead of them.

Starting line ups and playing style – The key purpose of Moyes’s starting line up,  is for it to be as different as possible in every way from any starting line up he’s chosen previously. It is especially important that if any player played well in the previous game, they are either removed from the team or played in a different position. Generally a minimum of six changes is required, with a further two positional changes.

Despite this however, there will still be some constants. For example, Moyes will generally select a back four, a midfield four, and two strikers. One of Young or Valencia will be selected to play out wide (whichever one didn’t play in the last game), while the other wing will generally be used to play someone who isn’t a winger out of position. The main purpose of this is to allow them to be subbed off for Hernandez. Both strikers will push up past each other, while the two midfielders will drop back as far as possible. This allows for the team to play slow, ineffective long balls out wide. One of Vidic or Rio Ferdinand will be played in the back four to further encourage this. Moyes in doing this has effectively solved United’s problem of not having a midfield, by simply removing the entire middle area of the pitch.

To explain, when in attack, the team will generally line up like so:

The aim of the furthest forward wide players (the fullbacks) is to cross the ball aimlessly, while everyone else’s job is to get the ball as wide as possible by passing sideways or diagonally. At no point is any pass played forwards at more than 45 degrees. As such, the need for a midfield is negated.

Defensively, this set up is prefered:

By focusing on the wide areas and leaving the middle of the pitch open, United can prevent the opposition from crossing any aimless balls into the box or middle of the pitch in the first place. Removing the need to worry about the middle of the pitch at all. This method, one can only assume, is highly effective when practiced in training against the above attacking method, with practice games frequently ending in a stalemate.

Mata transfer – Juan (one…lol) might assume that when a manager signs a player for nearly £40m (forty FECKING million pounds!…lol), that they have a plan or specific role in mind for that player. Perhaps even a vision to build a team around them. This would be the sort of move months of planning and scouting had been put into. Not so with Moyes. Ever the revolutionary, Moyes’s plan for Mata was made clear when following the Spaniard’s first game, he stated “I’m going to try him in some different positions”

This of course isn’t a plan. It’s the opposite of having a plan. It’s like buying a house in order to try living in some different places, but there in lies the genius. Mata is capable of playing equally ineffectively on either wing, or effectively in the middle of the pitch. By signing a player only capable of playing effectively in the middle of the pitch, Moyes has increased his ability to both play a non wide player out of position, and thus bring Hernandez on for them late on in games. What’s the best thing to do if you don’t want to buy a house? Buy a really expensive one that’s situated somewhere you never plan to live, obviously. £40m well spent.

Vidic/captaincy/leadership – As club captain of Manchester United, Vidic has been awarded some kind of general immunity from having any responsibilities whatsoever. Free from the shackles of requirements such as passing the ball to team mates from time to time, marking opposition players, or demonstrating any kind of leadership qualities whatsoever, Vidic has been able to thrive this season in his new role of being utterly useless in every way. Without this immunity, Vidic would also have been unable to perform such tasks as selfishly getting himself sent off, or announcing midway through the season that he’s going to fuck off because he has no desire left to play for the club anymore. Importantly, Moyes has come out in support of these actions, clarifying his approval of them and desire that it wont effect Vidic’s role in the team at all. Otherwise there would be a danger of Vidic feeling some kind of self responsibility, which if left unchecked could lead to him accidentally improving part of his game and playing slightly less terribly.

Luck  and dealing with the press – A chief tactic of Moyes is to blame everything that goes wrong on luck, again enabling the team and himself to be absorbed of any sense of responsibility or blame, and thus avoiding any danger of them not making similar mistakes in the future.  The other team score a deflected goal? …luck. United lose 7 out of 8 games in succession? bad luck is to blame. A goal is conceded with ease every time an opposition team runs up the pitch? Terrible luck. Simple fixes to recurring problems must be ignored at all costs in order to enable this pattern to continue.

Another favoured quote of Moyes is the “I don’t know” prefix. For example “I don’t know what I have to do to win a game”, “I don’t know what more we could have done”, “I don’t know how much more we could have done to try and score a goal” etc. There are two reasons for this, the first is to ensure that a lack of confidence and belief in the club remains instilled throughout the players, supporters and media. The second is to ensure supporters that no matter how bad things get, there is no danger of them getting any better next time. This is because if there is anything that could make things better, Moyes “doesn’t know” what it is, or how to do it. Fans can therefore feel secure in the team’s ability to continue to fail miserably at any task.

“And this button here also prompts Tom Cleverley to play a hospital pass”

…So, what’s the honest verdict? In truth I feel sorry for Moyes. I don’t dislike him in any way. I still feel pity and will for him to succeed as opposed to any real anger…but I have also, like most, slowly lost faith in him. He’s like a man who’s been happily living and ruling inside his tiny cardboard box for the last 30 years, and suddenly the box has opened to reveal the rest of the universe, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He just, does things, and then does some different things, and then seems bewildered by any consequence.

Imagine taking someone who’s mastered the art of operating a forklift, sitting them alone in the cockpit of a Concorde, and then saying “fly this plane”…well that’s kind of what’s happened. The vision being that the rest of the crew already in place would help manage the load, except the previous pilot Ferguson took his co-pilot Gill with him, and in their absence the rest of the crew have revealed themselves to be a babbling hoard of useless cretins, either causing more damage than they’re fixing, or grabbing the nearest parachute and making a beeline for the nearest escape hatch.

I like Moyes and really want him to succeed, but over half a season in, and he’s still just pressing random buttons in the hope one of them will do something useful. Confidence in him has turned to general panic. The fuel must be starting to run low, and even those looking in from the outside have gone from finding the whole scenario amusing, to just being bemused and slightly horrified by it all. Chelsea fans now rant at ME about why United aren’t doing better, and the saddest fact is that everything written in sarcasm above, is based on what’s actually happening. It may as well be filed as United’s realistic strategic plan for the season.

Gone is any of my reason, conviction or any real belief in attempts to defend the idea of Moyes turning things around. Whether it’s his fault or not (and the staff and particularly players have hardly done anything to make his job any easier) it becomes more painfully clear with each week that it just isn’t working. The plane isn’t steadying, it’s nosediving in a spiral with two stalled engines. Barring a minor miracle, we’ve already reached a point of the next person’s first job being to limit the amount of wreckage and then start cleaning it up, before we can even think about re-building or “transition”. It’s become increasingly hard not to believe that the sooner this process starts isn’t the better.

The fact is there are a lot of people who aren’t helping Moyes, but it’s almost as if Moyes needs to be shown where the door is himself before he’ll usher anyone else through it.