Coming Full Circle

Because many (understandably, I'll admit) were embittered by his exit and how he conducted himself in the market, people forget that the football between 07-13 was good (some argue less so from 11-13), we had a lot of good players, and that the only thing which stopped us from breaking the top four was our potless chairman's inability to put his hand in his pocket and fund the team to the extent we needed.

Was I thrilled by his conduct as United manager? No. None of us were. But he was doing what he could for his new team, and frankly, we could have done with a bit more of that ruthlessness from his successors. It's been 12 years, and it's time to close the wound. As Paul DePodesta observed in Moneyball (the book, which was even better than the film), "morality is for fans". Moyes was doing his job.

He's categorically a better manager than Sean Dyche was (thank you for your work, sir, best of luck elsewhere), and I think Moyes will do fine, if shown some grace by the fanbase. Realistically, we're at the weakest point we've been as a club since the end of Walter Smith, and we all saw what Moyes created when given time.

Moyes certainly has more experience in managing better players than Sean Dyche has ever had. Relative to other teams I am not sure we are in a better or worse place than we were in March 2002.

Then we had strong characters such as Kevin Campbell, Alan Stubbs, David Weir, Lee Carsley, David Unsworth and Thomas Gravesen. Waiting in the wings was a promising young lad from Croxteth. Now we have Tarkowski, Pickford and a whole team’s worth of players out of contract at the end of the season. There is much to be done to build a competitive squad.