The patient supporters can lie all they want, no one expected the first season of David Moyes in charge of Manchester Untied to be such a disaster. No hope for a championship and possibly none for any kind of title, it seems that too many people are waiting for it to actually be over.
Moyes keeps saying that he won’t sign players in January. It might not be true – managers don’t tell the truth to the press, but it might also be about not getting the funds to do something about the rather terrible situation Manchester United are in.
The positive? Signs for optimism? Danny Welbeck and Adnan Januzaj are flourishing under David Moyes, while Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie won’t be injured forever. When they return (if they return) that 4th place for the Champions League should still be within reach, and it’ll be foolish to count them out of that race.
But there are so many negative marks for Moyes during his first tenure – almost every player besides those we mentioned above are playing below their previous level. Maybe it’s just a coincidence: Vidic, Ferdinand and Giggs are old, it has nothing to do with Moyes. But the mess he’s made by pretty much cancelling out too many players (Kagawa, Hernandez) or not giving an expensive signing a proper chance (Zaha, for whatever reason) speaks volumes about the real place United have suffered in the offseason from a massive drop in quality: The manager position.
Moyes keeps taking shots from every possible angle, but he stays true to his words after every match: Something about playing well, something about being pleased, something about being unlucky, something about the referees. When you say something so many times, you actually begin believing in it. The opposite happens to the person listening; it sounds right, true, correct, but only at first. The more you hear it, the more it seems like someone is trying to pull a blindfold over your eyes and hope you’ll buy anything.
No matter what happens this season (or what’s left of it), lying about the fact that this season is a failure isn’t going to change that it is. For David Moyes, who has been hinting (or more than that) that the squad needs some major re-tooling, summer and the offseason, where he hopes to get proper funds, can’t come soon enough.