DAVID MOYES EXCLUSIVE: Manchester United never gave me time to succeed or fail... following Sir Alex Ferguson was near enough the impossible job but it was the right one for me
Moyes speaks to chief sports reporter Matt Lawton in his first interview since his sacking by Manchester United on April 22
The Scot lasted 10 months at Old Trafford after a successful 11-year spell in charge at Everton
Moyes accepts that following Sir Alex Ferguson was 'near enough the impossible job'
He has spoken to Ferguson and accepts that his predecessor was in a tough position
Moyes admits he wanted to sign Cesc Fabregas, Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo
The 51-year-old is keen to find the right job, whether it be in England or abroad
In a distant corner of Manchester United’s training ground a lone figure is running. It is 4am, pitch black, the silence broken only by the sound of his breathing and his footsteps on the perfectly tended grass.
David Moyes is in the dark but he knows what is coming. Nobody from what is supposed to be the world’s greatest football club has told him. But he knows, as he circles the perimeter of Carrington’s pitches one last time, that it is over; knows that in a few hours his players will be training here but he will be gone, no longer their manager.
He knows because the story broke on a number of websites the day before. He didn’t believe it at first. Indeed, when I spoke to him within an hour of the story appearing, he was incredulous. ‘There’s no way you guys would know before me,’ he said in the first of two conversations we had that day. ‘This is Manchester United we’re talking about.’
Out of work: David Moyes is currently without a club after being sacked by Manchester United in April
Tough going: Moyes (right) stands on the touchline beside his Everton successor Roberto Martinez in April
Bad start: Wayne Rooney's new-look Manchester United lost to Swansea in their 2014/15 league opener
Moyes was not being naive. Nobody could ever accuse this streetwise Glaswegian of that. But even after a crushing defeat at Everton two days earlier, he was struggling to come to terms with the fact it was ending like this; struggling to believe, having given up the stability he had enjoyed for 11 successful years at Goodison Park, that within barely 10 months his new employers would allow him to be utterly humiliated.
By the time he went to bed on that Easter Monday, he knew he had been. For a start people had not been answering their phones, and when he finally did make contact with Ed Woodward, the club’s executive vice-chairman would only say that he would meet him at Carrington at 8am.
Moyes had no intention of driving in at that time — not when the cameras would be waiting. So he got there four hours early, went for a run, took a shower and then, alone in an empty, eerie building, began to clear his desk. ‘I hadn’t slept a wink,’ he says. ‘But the run gave me a chance to clear my head. A bit of time to think before I started to pack up my stuff.’
Candid: Moyes speaks during his first interview since his brutal dismissal by Manchester United
Not as easy as it looks: Louis van Gaal couldn't stop his side's poor form domestically
‘I saw what I thought were important similarities between United and Everton. Like the focus on developing young players. Look at the players we brought through at Everton. As well as the ones we brought in. You go back to Wayne Rooney and all the other lads. Ross Barkley, Pienaar, Coleman, Jagielka, Baines and Lescott.
We signed John Stones. We had a really good club at Everton who gave me the opportunity to do the job the way I felt it needed to be done.’
By accident I met Moyes in London the night he got the United job. He had travelled down to complete the formalities with Bill Kenwright, the Everton chairman he admired so much. Moyes was with his brother and adviser, Kenny, and was clearly excited by the prospect of succeeding Sir Alex Ferguson. It was the job he had always craved.
Now, however, he accepts that following the finest British manager in history was no easy task. ‘It was a step into the unknown and, looking back now, it was near enough the impossible job,’ he says. ‘But it was the right job for me.
I’d been at Everton for more than 11 years. We’d qualified for the Champions League, got to an FA Cup final, I’d been voted manager of the season three times. I was among the most experienced managers in the Premier League. United had always had British managers.
‘I was devastated to lose the job because it was something I felt I could make a real success of. We knew it was going to take time to make the necessary changes. It was going to take time to evolve. But we were in the process of making other important changes. In the end, I don’t feel I was given time to succeed or fail.’
He has done an awful lot of thinking since April 22, and now he is reflecting on his brief but difficult tenure in the first interview he has given since his brutal dismissal.
Foremost in his mind is a desire to communicate how determined he is to return to work. His powers have not been diminished, he insists. On the contrary, he feels the next club to employ him will be hiring a David Moyes more focused and determined than ever.
But he will be choosing his next job very carefully, and understandably so. ‘I would never have left a job,’ he says before pausing. ‘The job at Everton was so good. I worked for a great chairman, great people at the club.
‘It was not easy to begin with at Everton either. We had a couple of tough years before we had the club the way we wanted it. But the reason I went to United was because I thought I was joining a club that would give me time. That was the big thing. I didn’t want to change anything immediately. I wanted to take my time working out what I thought was needed.
That final remark is one he repeats more than once over a three-hour lunch in a charming Italian restaurant in Hale, Cheshire, but there are plenty of other subjects he wants to tackle in a conversation in which he concedes that he might have approached the job differently, answers some of the accusations that have been levelled at him and reveals that he too would have made Rooney his captain this season.
What still troubles him is the nature of his departure, though. He has to be careful because he is bound by a confidentiality agreement in his severance deal. But plenty have already expressed their view. Ferguson told dinner guests in Manchester that week that it was ‘upsetting the way it came out’.
Roy Keane blamed Woodward, saying Moyes deserved more time and that the club’s executive vice chairman needed to take ‘a long hard look at himself’.
The League Managers’ Association said the dismissal of Moyes had been ‘handled in an unprofessional manner’.
United contested that accusation but there is no escaping the facts. Moyes was among the last to know and the impact it had on his family still distresses him. His father was seriously ill at the time, and deeply upset by the humiliation his son suffered.
‘In the end it was difficult for my family, the way we discovered — via the media — that I’d lost my job,’ he says. ‘We have always tried to do things the correct way. I know it comes with the territory, and I know if you lose matches you risk being sacked. But how it affected my family made it hard.
My dad is a great football man [he was a coach at the much respected Drumchapel Amateur Football Club where both Moyes and Ferguson had started out]. He lives near us [in the house adjacent to the family home near Preston] and he has always followed my career. I always take him to the games and I hope when I’m his age — he’s 79 now — my son takes me to the football, too.
‘But he wasn’t well for a while after that. We don’t think what happened to me was the cause, but that made it tough. He’s fine now, I’m pleased to say. In my mind I have moved on, but the way I lost my job is something I won’t forget.’
His wife Pamela, he says, is a strong lady. ‘She understands that if you lose games, you expect criticism,’ he says. ‘That’s the game we’re in. She was incredibly supportive. Many times when there were members of the press at the end of the drive she’d make them a cup of tea.
She was also getting to find her way around Old Trafford as the manager’s wife. She’s really good in company. I think it was hard when we walked into paparazzi at Miami airport, after I’d been sacked. But even then we managed to laugh about it. She said to me, “I hope they don’t get us on the beach!”.
‘What upset her, though, was the fact that I was being told by members of the press that day that I was out. I just never expected that to happen.’
Head in his hands: Moyes (right) shows his frustrations during a 4-1 defeat to city rivals Manchester City
Ouch: Ferguson grimaces (with Louis van Gaal in front) as he watches United lose 3-1 to Chelsea in January
It would be wrong to imagine this is a bitter and twisted David Moyes talking here. He is calm and considered, and he looks tanned and well compared to the slightly greying, chastened individual we saw fighting for survival in those final few months at United.
After climbing from his car — a sleek, black sporty number — he jokes that it is the first he has had to buy in he can’t remember how long. Never one for blowing his cash on flash motors, he had always been happy to drive whatever vehicle had come with the job.
But now he is out of work. Now, for the first time in 35 years, he is not preparing for a new football season.
And it hurts, even if he does seem in good spirits when he talks about how much he enjoys walking his dogs and raves about the ‘brilliant new Donald Trump golf course near Aberdeen’.
Inside, however, he is suffering. Not least because it is not in the nature of a proud, working-class Scotsman to be idle. He wants to work. He needs to work, and a few days before the start of a new Premier League season he is seriously missing work.
‘This is the first time I’ve missed a pre-season since I was 16,’ he says. ‘I’m 51 now so that’s a long time. I’ve missed it because pre-season is quite an enjoyable time. As a manager it’s a bit more relaxed. I’ve also enjoyed having a bit more spare time than normal.
Good spirits: Moyes is enjoying walking his dogs and playing golf at the Donald Trump course near Aberdeen
‘It’s going to hurt this weekend that I’m not managing Manchester United, because that’s obviously what I’d have liked to have been doing. But I’ll watch the games. I won’t be running away from it. Football is something I’ve been involved in since I was a boy.’
I ask him if his passion for football has in any way been diminished. ‘I still love the game,’ he says. ‘At times I found it difficult. But I love being around football people and I also accept that you are going to have bad times as well as good times. And I’ve still had an awful lot of good times.’
In the statement issued through the LMA on his behalf after his dismissal, much was made of an apparent snub to the players. He had mentioned his ‘staff’ but not his squad. Sitting here now, however, he wants to clarify something.
‘On the day I lost my job I spoke to every player at the training ground,’ he says. ‘I called the players into the dressing room at 10am that morning and told them how disappointed I was; how surprised I was that it had ended so soon. But I told them that they were playing for a great club.
I told them that they should all embrace it and realise how fortunate they are.
‘The players were how you would expect them to be. Quiet but respectful. If you’re a Manchester United player you have to have a lot of respect. It was the first time I’d ever had to give a speech like that. Never before in my career. But I felt it was the right thing to do, to address them before I left.’
Farewell: Moyes waves to the fans at Old Trafford during his difficult 10-month spell in charge
It was a dignified exit but it has not been the only example of such dignity these past few months. He has endured a fair bit of criticism on the sports pages of the national press but still had dinner with a number of football writers in Miami during the week England spent there prior to the World Cup. Indeed he picked up the tab, even after discovering the numbers had swelled to more than he expected.
When he agreed to this interview, he asked only that any fee this newspaper might wish to pay — he does not specify a figure — be donated to Darren Fletcher’s ‘United For Colitis’ charity. ‘When a plane flew over Old Trafford that day towing that banner [it said ‘Moyes Out’] I turned to someone next to me and said they would have been better giving the money to Darren’s charity,’ he says.
In reports that emerged in the days that followed his dismissal, it was suggested his attempts to contact Ferguson on that Easter Monday had proved unsuccessful. ‘I’ve met Alex on several occasions since I left,’ he says. ‘And I spoke to him about the days surrounding my departure. He explained it to me and I totally accepted what he said. He was in a difficult position, and I understood that.
Plane to see: A banner flies over Old Trafford during the Manchester United vs Aston Villa clash in March
‘At no time did I ever have anything other than 100 per cent support from him. He was always incredibly good to me. We had several meetings over the course of my time at the club. We spoke regularly. And I saw him being around me only as a positive.’
He is candid enough to admit that, in hindsight, he might have done certain things differently at United. ‘If there was one thing I would have changed I would have started the day after I finished the season with Everton,’ he says. ‘Instead of waiting until July 1, I’d have started immediately.’ An Everton contract that ran until June 30 meant he couldn’t. ‘And within a few days of starting I was off on tour all around Asia,’ he says.
‘I also went into the job thinking I want to do exactly what I did at Everton. I want to be the same person. I want to manage in the same style. Because why would I change when I had success working that way? But now, looking back, I think there might have to have been a slightly different approach.
I might have altered the style in which I managed.’
He is reluctant to explain exactly how. ‘I just want to keep working,’ he says. ‘I worked long and hard to get to that level. I put in an awful lot of effort for it to be taken away from me. And I feel that whoever gets me now will probably get, not a more determined David Moyes because I’ve always given everything, but I will definitely have a focus on what I’ll be aiming to do and what I’ll be aiming to achieve. I don’t think I’ve necessarily got anything to prove to anyone. I’ve worked really hard my whole career.’
But what went wrong at United? Why was it impossible? ‘I’ve tried to analyse it,’ he says. ‘I’ve been listening to Louis van Gaal and he has been saying similar things. For instance the fact that he wants to give every player an opportunity to show what they can do.
‘We tried to bring players in during the summer transfer window but they didn’t materialise.
It certainly wasn’t for the lack of trying. It wasn’t indecision. The complete opposite.
‘It’s been well documented that we wanted Fabregas, Bale and Ronaldo.
There was talk of Ronaldo when I first arrived. We were close to getting a couple of major names. I’m not getting in a blame game here but things just didn’t materialise. I had taken over from the most successful manager in history. The chief executive had taken over from one of the most renowned administrators in the game [David Gill]. So it was a new job for two people.’
New man in town: Louis van Gaal has replaced Moyes in the Manchester United hot seat
In the end he made a late move for Marouane Fellaini, a player who was hugely impressive at Everton but seemed to struggle under the burden of expectation at United. Moyes says ‘he simply needs to be given more time’.
‘The players were fantastic,’ he says. ‘They were great. I just don’t think I was given time to succeed or fail. I was taking over from a manager who had been there for more than 20 years, and I tried to continue the success the club had enjoyed. There was always going to be a difficult period.
‘I thought we worked well together. We worked as a team. We tried to do the right things. I was criticised for getting rid of Rene Meulensteen but I asked him to stay. But since we left I’ve spoken to my staff and we’ve gone through what happened. It meant a lot to us all. We were all desperate to succeed and we’re all hurt. But we will learn from this.’
Moyes responds to certain accusations that were levelled at him. For instance, had he encouraged Rio Ferdinand to study a video of Phil Jagielka? ‘That’s nonsense,’ he says. ‘I would never do that.’
He was criticised for taking the players for a stroll on Bondi beach, where they were mobbed by autograph hunters. ‘It was a Sunday morning in winter time there,’ he says. ‘I really don’t see what the problem was.’ He could also add that Van Gaal took the players for a stroll on the beach in Santa Monica just recently.
Struggle: Moyes signed Marouane Fellaini (left) from Everton but the Belgian has struggled at United
On the beach: Moyes was criticised for allowing United players to run on Bondi Beach during pre-season
Further to that, he denies any personal issue with Robin van Persie. ‘I had a good relationship with Robin,’ he says. ‘I liked him a lot. He was an intelligent guy. He had more injuries than the previous season but we did everything we could to get him fit.’
He applauds Van Gaal for making Rooney the new club captain, agreeing that the timing is right for the England forward. ‘Wayne would have become captain under me,’ he says. ‘Because of where he’s at now as a player. I think in time he may develop into a midfield player.
He’s a great centre-forward but in the coming years I can see that happening.
He can play in a number of positions. He’s very experienced now. Not a lot fazes him.
I think he might need that responsibility now. Certainly for the next part of his career.
Wayne worked as hard as anyone last year. He got himself in great condition, he worked great for me and he was great for the team.’
Now, however, Moyes needs to find a new team with new players; a new opportunity to demonstrate that he remains among the best managers around.
He took some pleasure in watching so many players he has worked with in action at this summer’s World Cup — 24 in all — but has his fall at United damaged his confidence? ‘It would have knocked the confidence of any manager but I believe I’ll be a better manager for the experience.’
No problem: Moyes denies that he had any personal issue with Dutchman Robin van Persie (right)
Captain fantastic: Rooney has been named by van Gaal as the new captain at Manchester United
He is open-minded about where he works next. A club abroad is just as appealing as one here in England. It just needs to be the right job.
‘I’ve been sounded out by a few people about different jobs but I’d like to find a job, if I can, that gives me a chance of being successful,’ he says.
‘I had a look at Galatasaray and they had a look at me, and nothing came of it. But abroad is a possibility. We’ve always had a healthy number of foreign managers in the Premier League and I’ve always felt we should have a similar balance of British managers working abroad.
‘It may help and enhance me to go abroad. Look at Roy Hodgson’s career. Look at Terry Venables; Sir Bobby Robson. I don’t think it did them any harm.
I left a very stable job in the belief I was taking another stable job, so I’ll be taking my time finding something that’s right.’
In the meantime he will watch football. This weekend has been spent in Qatar working as a television pundit. And he is trying to reply to the ‘thousands’ of letters of support he has received, with Neil Kinnock and Gordon Brown among those to have written to him.
He also plans to accept an invitation from Carlo Ancelotti to watch Real Madrid train. ‘Towards the end of my time at Preston I went to watch Carlo’s training in Milan,’ he says. ‘He remembered that when he came to the Premier League. In fact, the night he was sacked by Chelsea, in a corridor at Everton, he turned to me and said, “Maybe I’ll come and watch your training at Everton now”. Carlo’s a nice man.’
Indeed he is, and Moyes might note that the Italian also bounced back rather well after the humiliation of that particular dismissal.
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