On Manchester United, Moyes, Malky Mackay and Moody

What has happened to Manchester United?

I think the media have underplayed the amount of schadenfruede surrounding Manchester United’s humiliating, spectacular fall and crisis of confidence. They have become embarrassing; a couple of Manchester United fans I know have even started denying ever being so.  Most other fans gain an enormous amount of pleasure from United’s humbling, me included. At one level, it seems the reason for their decline is simple, Ferguson’s retirement. But at another level the root causes for such a precipitous decline are elusive. Poor quality sports journalism in the mainstream media doesn’t help us to understand much. I’m going to examine some of the reasons which have been put forward for Manchester United’s collapse below.

Reason 1. It is all David Moyes’ fault.

This reason seems plausible at first glance. Some journalists said that the job was ‘too big’ for Moyes and that he was ‘out of his depth’, but I don’t understand what that nonsense means. He didn’t have any more to think about, or any more work to do at Manchester United than at Everton. He had about the same number of players, and not too many more games. They seem like meaningless clichés to me.       

Moyes made a lot of mistakes (for example, the sale of Vidic, or the ‘crosses into the box’ tactic he used in some matches). But he was unlucky with some players’ terrible loss of form (e.g. Fellaini) and he was unlucky with injuries (e.g. van Persie). Manchester United’s core problems were not really tactical and the players seemed well-prepared for each game. It seems reductionist to blame it all on him.

Reason 2. The players aren’t trying hard enough.

This also seems quite plausible at first. Several players (e.g. Young, Carrick, Nani, Hernandez) were so poor last season that they were shadows of their former selves. But it seems extraordinary that a professional football player paid millions of pounds a year would put in any less than 100%. There is no evidence from the Prozone stats that players have been trying any less hard than under Ferguson. Surely Moyes or Van Gaal would just drop any player who wasn’t trying hard enough, their squad had and still has enough strength in depth and competition for places. The players have been trying their best, but I would just note that they lost their confidence very, very quickly after a few early defeats at the beginning of last season. They haven’t really recovered from there.

Reason 3. The squad weren’t that good to begin with.

Some professional journalists are seemingly almost psychotic in their belief that Moyes inherited a weak team. I have read things like Manchester United’s squad was ageing and was ‘in need of strengthening’ last summer. Again, I don’t understand what that means. Either they had a good enough squad or they did not; they had just won the league by eleven points and had plenty of young players coming through which strongly suggests that their squad was absolutely excellent. The addition of Fellaini should (on paper) have been enough for them to compete for the title again. This week, Eurosport claimed that ‘the rot of mediocrity set in with Alex Ferguson’s last couple of seasons’.  Another thing that I have read (in a serious news source) is that United were somehow ‘lucky’ to win the title in 2012/13. But how can you be a mediocre team and lucky to win the league when you win it by such a wide margin? It doesn’t make sense at all.

None of the reasons discussed appear to be very satisfactory in explaining what has gone wrong. Moyes inherited an absolutely excellent squad (so has Van Gaal) but perhaps the only criticism is that they are a bit mentally fragile. Maybe they were all so used to success that they don’t have enough resilience to deal a difficult moment?

Mackay and Moody

All these journalists saying that the Mackay and Moody affair shines a light on a wider malaise in English football are talking bollocks.

Mackay and Moody are bad apples; Mackay says he’s not a racist, sexist, homophobe or anti-semite, but he does a very convincing impression of one, doesn’t he? The fact that they waited until their comments became public knowledge before apologizing, and that Mackay didn’t come clean in an interview on August 22^nd about how many offensive messages he’d actually sent are greatly aggravating factors, in my view. I also suspect that they may have taken out an injunction against further texting revelations since we haven't heard anything more about it since Friday. They're trying their to avoid making a full apology and they're only sorry they've been caught. And this isn’t even the worst thing they've been accused of!

Deliberately overpaying agents with club money is a criminal offence. I predict Mackay and Moody will end up going to jail.