Saturday 8 April 2017 15:19, UK
David Moyes' stock has fallen since being given the Manchester United job and he now faces relegation with Sunderland. As the Scot prepares to face his former club, Adam Bate looks at where it went wrong for the man at the eye of an unwelcome storm.
David Moyes is a serious man. A coach of substance whose reputation was forged over a decade at Everton in which he established himself as an emblem of consistency. Only Sir Alex Ferguson has been named LMA manager of the year as many times and Ferguson was not the only one who once thought Moyes was the right man for Manchester United.
He recognised a kindred spirit, a fellow Glaswegian from the other side of the River Clyde. He called him a "first-class manager" and pointed to the "amazing job" that Moyes did at Everton. Others referenced the ravenous appetite for the game - "It's probably my hobby as well" - and an outward-looking approach that saw him look to the Bundesliga for new ideas.
So the 53-year-old could be forgiven for wondering how it has all come to this. His Sunderland side sit bottom of the Premier League, seemingly certainties for relegation, and Moyes is now cast as yesterday's man in more ways than one - an increasingly hapless figure whose stock seems to spiral still further with each passing week.
Indeed, things are only getting worse. Now compelled to apologise to a female reporter for threatening to slap her, his unconvincing defence was to argue that such remarks were out of character but even that is disputed. The one element of his awkward apology not in any doubt is that football managers find themselves under severe stress.
It is not difficult to pinpoint the period in his career in which such strain really began to take its toll on David Moyes.
On Sunday, Manchester United will be the visitors to the Stadium of Light. Ostensibly, the club continues to underachieve since Ferguson's departure. Seventh when Moyes was sacked, after substantial spending they lie fifth under Jose Mourinho. But there is little appetite for a reappraisal of the Scot's reign. For fans, it remains better best forgotten.
The travails of Mourinho and Louis van Gaal might have put Moyes' own difficulties into better context had he bounced back following his United exit to re-establish his reputation as a quality coach. But a sojourn in Spain was middling at best and the Sunderland job is proving every bit as tough as Moyes was only too keen to tell everyone that it would be.
This desire to downplay the possibilities has become a real problem. At Real Sociedad, Moyes was quick to point out that his "remit was to avoid relegation" and while club president Jokin Aperribay said upon his sacking that the manager had "exceeded my expectations in terms of hard work and integrity", the wins were not so forthcoming.
Moyes left in November 2015 with La Real only out of the relegation zone on goal difference. "I don't think that right now we have to have Europe as a goal," he had said on the eve of the season opener. "Considering what we did last season, looking to Europe is a very big step." A trademark attempt to de-escalate ambitions.
But guess what? Despite signing only three players since then, Moyes' replacement Eusebio has the Basque club in sixth spot and, until very recently, challenging Atletico Madrid for the final Champions League place. They appear a club reinvigorated, with ambition at the Anoeta no longer a dirty word. Eusebio has signed a new deal to 2019 and Europe beckons.
Taken in isolation, Moyes' spell in Spain was no abject failure and he deserves some credit for embracing the opportunity. But what is striking is that this trend of talking down his own team shows no sign of abating. At Everton, it came to be stifling for supporters, at United it felt faintly ludicrous. For Sunderland fans, it has helped the manager more than the club.
"They don't want to get in a situation of tossing and turning and changing managers all the time and that, at the moment, is helping me," said Moyes upon becoming the club's seventh boss in five years. "Stability is needed. The club don't want to change managers again and rightly so." But being the only side in the drop zone not to wield the axe has not worked.
Indeed, the impending relegation might now be styled as inevitable but it did not need to feel that way. Having picked up 12 points from the last six games of the previous campaign, losing two of 14, there was something to build on. Enough to justify optimism at least. It's worth noting that in August the Black Cats were longer odds to go down than West Brom.
There have been mistakes and misfortunes, issues of budget and time. There are problems that predate his arrival and others that have been exacerbated. Selections errors have been a factor, morale too. But the biggest issue in regard to the manager himself is the feeling that the years are draining him rather than adding layers of knowledge and experience.
Signings such as Darron Gibson, Steven Pienaar and Joleon Lescott hinted at a contacts list alarmingly out of date. Certainly, the supposed familiarity with the Spanish market was of little use - adding weight to the words of Diario Vasco journalist Inaki Izquierdo who claimed that Moyes appeared little more familiar with the country when he left than when he'd joined.
Even the old praise now seems like covert criticism. Those traditional traits are used instead as sticks with which to beat him. His old Preston captain Sean Gregan called Moyes "thorough and disciplined" but what of imagination? Former Deepdale defensive partner Colin Murdoch described him as "methodical and diligent" but how about some inspiration?
Now Sunderland fans are encouraged by the club's hierarchy to consider those experiences with Preston in the belief that he would be the right man to take the club back up. But Moyes had also tried to persuade people that his Everton efforts made him the ideal man to keep them there in the first place and it is 15 years since he coached in the second tier.
Hopes of avoiding the drop have all but gone and Moyes has much work to do to convince that his own powers to endure have not been similarly extinguished too. A Moyes team will play host to Manchester United this weekend for the first time since Ferguson's men travelled to Everton in 2012. Moyes won that one. But in every sense, that feels an age ago now.
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