What are Manchester United’s David Moyes Current Problems?

It’s still early days of ‘A New Era’ at Manchester United. David Moyes took over from Sir Alex Ferguson during July of 2013 and hasn’t made the best of starts. Most people thought he was going to go off to a blistering start but it hasn’t gone to plans. They are currently sitting 7th on 37 points, 11 behind premier league leaders Arsenal.

When Manchester United chose Sir Alex Ferguson’s successor, there were a lot of questions asked about the fact that he has had no success in the Premier League apart from building a really nice looking and strong Everton side. There were a few other managers that would’ve suited the success part in the managerial CV but the Manchester United owners (and probably SAF himself) wanted to keep some kind of Scottish reign at Manchester United.

It has been a bad start to 2014 for United also, 3 losses and 1 victory. Spurs, Swansea (them two at home) and then the Capital One Cup 1st leg defeat at Sunderland. Manchester United fans are calling for Moyes’ head and they want him sacked as United manager. I don’t think he’ll be sacked, the reason I think this is because they are going to try and do the same with Moyes as they did with Sir Alex Ferguson; keep him for 15+ years.

The main thing United are looking to do is to shape up for the future, that’s exactly what they did with SAF. Fans and club owners will need to wait for a bit until they will have a very stable team that can all click with one another, basically, all the cogs must mesh together. Moyes had done that at Everton, with very limited resources he had made a side that started off fighting at the bottom of the table to challenging for the top 8 or maybe top 6.

The players are still a huge problem for Moyes, on paper they’re good players with a good track record underneath SAF but under Moyes they seem slightly average don’t they? Cleverley is a player that at the moment is being constantly slated by pundits and fans. His role in the team isn’t obvious, at times he is a winger, defensive midfielder, attacking midfielder or a holding midfielder. He is a versatile player but can’t seem to gel in one place without making a mistake or being slated. Carrick seems to be an average player without SAF’s brilliant tactics, although he is a player that is there to get the ball from one side of the pitch to another he seems to have lost the freedom he had under Fergie.

Moyes’ tactics are still taking time to grasp the minds of the players. With Everton, Moyes would have the team structured out very defensively and the team would always be prepared for a counter-attack (this was perfectly portrayed in their 2-0 victory at Goodison park last March during the 2012-2013 season against Manchester City). But unfortunately for Moyes, this is not how Manchester United play football. They’re well known for breaking down defence’s, making the plays themselves and chasing down the ball to retain possession of the ball. Something also that hasn’t been seen of United as much is the use of wingers and how they don’t cross the ball in as much as they did under SAF. They’ve gone for a more central kind of attacking play. This was shown in the 2-2 draw at White Hart Lane against Spurs. Both, Kagawa and Welbeck were playing very central, this meant that Evra was the only player that was playing on the left hand side of the pitch. This made United extremely vulnerable to the counter attack.

There was one thing that made Sir Alex such a brilliant manager and one of them characteristics was that everyone was scared of him; players, managers, officials and you could even say the FA were also. He was very well known for being very critical of the officials if he thought they made a bad decision. This is one of the main reasons that United had a reputation of getting penalties and many decisions going their way. Moyes hasn’t got that kind of reputation and that’s why he hasn’t had a huge amount of success. Many penalty decisions haven’t gone their way, the most recognisable penalty decision that hasn’t gone their way is the 2-1 home defeat to Tottenham this year where Lloris ran out and clattered Ashley Young. He (Lloris) made no contact with the ball and no decision was given.

The points I have spoken about don’t ‘prove’ but assist the fact that not everything is Moyes’ fault. All he needs is time. He will be successful as Manchester United manager, there are huge amounts of preparation needed to get back to their winning ways. The only thing United fans can do is to calm down, learn to trust their new manager and simply wait.