Who was worse, Moyes or Van Gaal?

Who did a worse job?

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Van Gaal, purely because he was given much more of a chance. Moyes presided over the worst season but had the harder job in taking over from SAF. He looked out of his depth at every turn but I have the feeling that if he had had a lot of time (time he did not deserve) he perhaps could have worked out what the job was really about and done it to a decent level. LVG spent tons of money and won the FA Cup, he was arrogant, he made loads of really bad calls and very few good ones, he did not really move the squad on much despite being given more than decent tools to work with, and worst of all, I never felt it could get better with him in charge. Close, both were poor, but LVG was more definitely poor IMO.

Also, what noodle said.
 
I actually think LVG did a solid job. Not a great job by any stretch of the imagination.

He took a team that had finished 7th and was devoid of all confidence and took them back into the top 4 at the first time of asking. He won a cup in the second season.

You can throw your arms in the air and say "We should expect better". Yep, we should. But there will always be down periods in a clubs history.

I also think it's because I'm old enough to remember us being awful that a pair of seasons finishing 4th then 5th while winning the FA Cup isn't a reason to slit my wrists.

LVG left a solid functioning team to improve upon. Great defensive unit. Shaw, Martial, Rashford, Lingard all look like United-for-life players. Smalling and Blind are huge positives too.

Moyes will go down as one of the worst, if not quite the worst managers in our history.
 
LVG can be argued to have left a legacy of sorts with young players. Moyes doesn't really have any positives at all. But perhaps he had an advantage in not following SAF immediately.
 
Dion said:
- Moyes fluffed his lines in the transfer market. The club let him spend £70m on players and he couldn't decide. LvG clearly wanted a top quality striker but couldn't find one.

- This bit is obviously just personal opinion but you only have to look at Moyes now to see what kind of personality he is.

- We were very rarely utterly outclassed by our rivals under LvG and actually won a cup, on a football level it's not even close. Moyes sacked plenty of the key backroom staff who could have offered some continuity and brought in his own group of like-minded imbeciles to act as yes-men. LvG had to rebuild because Moyes' tenure drove away half the staff and loads of key senior players. I don't particularly like the job LvG did of rebuilding, but at least we actually bought players instead of dithering and missing out on targets everywhere.

LvG was a continual disappointing, like having a dad who promises loads but always manages to mess it up. Moyes was like watching your new step-dad drive the family car off a cliff with your mother and siblings in the back.
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- He did decide. He decided he wanted a left back and a centre midfielder and the club signed neither...and then he got Mata instead, and everyone presumed this should mean we'd clamber back to the top four...which if you think about it now is completely ridiculous regardless of who the manager was. LVG signed 13 players by my count. Enough to build an entire team...yet constantly whinged about not having the right players. He got riid of 3 of the players HE brought in. He was only here 2 years. The striker excuse is completely flawed. In his first season, he had RVP, Falcaoo and Rooney...and when they were all fit had Di Maria playing up front as the main striker. In his second season he played our best striker on the wing.

- I'm not suggesting Moyes is a great guy, but if him and LVG had a who's the bigger tit contest, LVG would win comfortably...and probably be too busy shwing off about it to realise it's not a good thing.

- No, but we were outclassed by MK Dons instead...and last season Spurs...and Arsenal. Moyes sacked Muelesteen and Phelan, who both revealed themselves to be utter morons who didn't want to do as they were told. I don't even think that was a mistake. Replacing them with other inadequate people was. Which "key" senior players did Moyes drive away? The only one who left the club and carried on perfermoning to any kind of level is Evra, and it seemed like he would have stayed if the club had wanted him to.

The last statement makes no sense at all. I'd say what sums it up is that what Moyes got the most stick for was Fellaini, yet the only noticable or consistent plan or tactic LVG had in his whole time at United was literally Fellaini.
 
noodlehair said:
- He did decide. He decided he wanted a left back and a centre midfielder and the club signed neither...and then he got Mata instead, and everyone presumed this should mean we'd clamber back to the top four...which if you think about it now is completely ridiculous regardless of who the manager was. LVG signed 13 players by my count. Enough to build an entire team...yet constantly whinged about not having the right players. He got riid of 3 of the players HE brought in. He was only here 2 years. The striker excuse is completely flawed. In his first season, he had RVP, Falcaoo and Rooney...and when they were all fit had Di Maria playing up front as the main striker. In his second season he played our best striker on the wing.

- I'm not suggesting Moyes is a great guy, but if him and LVG had a who's the bigger tit contest, LVG would win comfortably...and probably be too busy shwing off about it to realise it's not a good thing.

- No, but we were outclassed by MK Dons instead...and last season Spurs...and Arsenal. Moyes sacked Muelesteen and Phelan, who both revealed themselves to be utter morons who didn't want to do as they were told. I don't even think that was a mistake. Replacing them with other inadequate people was. Which "key" senior players did Moyes drive away? The only one who left the club and carried on perfermoning to any kind of level is Evra, and it seemed like he would have stayed if the club had wanted him to.

The last statement makes no sense at all. I'd say what sums it up is that what Moyes got the most stick for was Fellaini, yet the only noticable or consistent plan or tactic LVG had in his whole time at United was literally Fellaini.
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- Except he couldn't decide which players he wanted to fill those roles so we signed someone he literally could have bought at any time anyway. Falcao, Rooney and RvP? You're arguing his case about needing a new striker. He had AdM there because none of the others were contributing. Martials best position is from the left, playing your best player in his best position isn't totally illogical. We'd certainly never have had the balls to spend that much on Martial under Moyes. Phelan knew what he was doing, he shouldn't have been ousted without a proper replacement. Just because Vidic and Ferdinand fell off a cliff when they were thrust into a new environment at an age when they were in no position to adapt doesn't mean they couldn't have contributed in a more familiar environment. Likewise you're wrong on Evra, the club wanted to keep him but he decided to be off for 'family reasons'.

- No, Moyes would somehow manage to finish 7th in that too. He'd be telling everyone how he deserved to be first though and how that is his level. At least LvG was entertaining, Moyes is a human wake.

- No team consistently beats every one of their rivals every time, we had a decent record under LvG. No team should be totally outclassed every time though like we did under Moyes. LvG also actually won something, in purely football terms he was a far better manager than Moyes.

You do realise your closing argument is that despite managing Fellaini for 5 years previously, it was LvG who actually managed to get any use out of the big useless feck and not the guy who bought him? A glowing endorsement of the shrivelled condon filled with haggis there.
 
>LVG played eight games against Liverpool and City and only lost one. Moyes played four league games against them and lost them all, by an aggregate of 11-1 (the 1 being a last-minute goal).


Is right
 
pierrethesnack said:
Here are a few:



I'm not ridiculing you guys who say LvG, I think it's interesting to read.
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I think some are putting their hate for LvG ahead of actually assessing the job he and Moyes did?

In this thread LvG is usually described as arrorgant, stubborn, smug, a bully and a fraud. Whereas at worst, Moyes is usually deluded, clueless, out of his depth, a ditherer and his failures often dismissed with 'he tried'.

Maybe we need another thread asking who the bigger cnut is...

Dion said:
LvG was a continual disappointing, like having a dad who promises loads but always manages to mess it up. Moyes was like watching your new step-dad drive the family car off a cliff with your mother and siblings in the back.
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:lol:

A step dad who thinks he'll survive the drop and wants to do it with more of your loved ones for the next six years.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Might well be a thread about this already but I can't find it. Interested in opinions about who did a worse job. I firmly believe Van Gaal did worse than Moyes, when you take into account the length of their spell in charge, the money invested in the squad and the relative strength of the teams around them.

Anyone else agree?

Anyone disagree?

Oh and for the record, I think Moyes did a very bad job. He was clearly out of his depth and was rightfully sacked.
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For me it was Moyes. I never had any confidence at all that we could our rivals with him in charge (strangely, the opposite was the case with LVG, even though I despised his brand of football.) I think if Moyes had been given a second season, things would have gotten much worse; much worse than the dross we saw in LVG's second season.

In any event, thank God we've moved on from those two.
 
noodlehair said:
Firstly, Moyes got far less backing in terms of financial power, bringing players in, etc. He asked for a left back, a midfielder and Fellaini (for some reason). He got Fellaini far too late...then we bafflingly paid to not sign Baines and spent all summer not signing Fabregas, and then briefly not signing Herrera. Then he got Mata and a week later admitted he hadn't really thought about how to use him, which was infuriating. LVG on the other hand was allowed to sign every player under the sun, and pretty much did sign most of them. Then got rid of loads. Then after had the cheek to whine about not having the right players and the squad being imbalanced. Any semblence of sympathy he might have got for inheriting players he didn't want was destroyed when he started getting rid of the players HE signed, signing more of them, and then STILL whining about not having the right players. LVG got better backing than any other manager in the League while Moyes was let down horribly.
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Don't believe that for a second to be honest mate. He wanted Fellaini we signed Fellaini for £4-5m more than we could have done only a month before because Moyes faffed about and didn't want Marouane to have the pressure of being his first signing.

He wanted Baines and we made several bids for Baines, Moyes if i remember decided against the deal late in the window because Everton wanted too much and Baines wouldn't hand in a transfer request.

He wanted Fabregas we made several bids for him but ultimately neither the player or the club seemed too keen to strike a deal. In doing so we wasted over a month of the transfer windows fecking about instead of trying to sign someone else.

We have it from several sources including Moyes that he wanted Bale and we made a rumoured £100m bid for him according to Perez, but he was too far down the road with Real.

He dithered on Herrera first deciding against signing him because he hadn't watched him enough in the year before, before telling Graham Hunter of all people the club eg. Woodward had decided to go all in for him late in the window. We missed out on him because again Moyes dithered on the deal and there wasn't enough time to sort out his complicated buy-out clause with the spanish FA.

Then on deadline day we thrashed about trying to sign the likes of Coentrao, Khedira and a move for De Rossi was also rumoured.

So while Woodward may have been learning the ropes and didn't cover himself in glory he wasn't exactly helped by Moyes fecking about and stalling on deal after deal. He took a 6 week holiday in May/June when he should have been working on transfers and swanned in on July 1st and only then did we start making bids for players. Contrast that to Jose signing 3 top players by the time the window had opened and having a deal in place for a 4th to be signed in early August. Theres a reason Everton fans called him dithering Dave.

Moyes himself was mostly to blame for that clusterfeck of a transfer window, he was certainly backed financially.
 
TwoSheds said:
Alternatively, Moyes took a team of champions, bought £70m of bang average player, turned them into a team that squeaked into 7th, losing to pretty much every decent team along the way. He then left us with an underwhelming Rooney on a huge contract and a Januzaj who'd grown too big for his boots and would go on to throw his career down the pan.

Van Gaal took that monstrosity of a side and turned it into a side that finished 4th and then 5th (on goal difference) and won the FA Cup. He also shipped off several players who were past their best and brought through a few bright youngsters. The year after he left we're probably in a position where we can win the league again, albeit having spent some serious cash.

Regardless, it's night and day. Never has a United team been so utterly lacking in character as under Moyes.
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I agree with all that except that Januzaj bit. For me, his success is the lone thing for which Moyes can take some credit.
 
It's fine, let's use the failure to sign players during Moyes reign as an excuse for him, when it is widely accepted that his dithering led to us not signing anyone.
 
Moyes without a doubt. Many reasons have been brought up in here already but the most damaging by far to me was the sheer ineptitude he seemed to exude. Sure, LVG was maddening to watch for staying on the bench most of the time (especially knowing he was once about as mad as Mou is on the sidelines) but at least with him you felt he was in charge, period. Having said that however it wasn't until last season under LVG that I seriously started losing interest in watching all United games. For years I'd go out of my way to catch nearly all of them or at least watch replays but that motivation got lost on me last season.

Regardless of everything to do with the on the field performance, or lack thereof, LVG seemed to have been exactly what in some ways we were kind of hoping for: someone to lay the groundwork for future success of a club in transition. Whether it's all the modifications to Carrington, all the young players he pushed to the front, or simply the renewed arrogance (justified or not). LVG here and before embodied United s ideals far more imho. Problem is, the slow natural growth Louis prides himself on maybe still works for clubs like Ajax these days but a club like United can't afford that waiting period. Had it been LVG right after SAF I honestly believe we could've been in better shape now. His fallout or disagreements with players that seemed to occur however were concerning.

In some strange way I think Mou might've looked elsewhere had it not been for LVG preceding him. Succeeding his former mentor must ve only been convenient in some ways.
 
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rpitroda said:
I disagree with a lot of this because it selectively looks at certain factors in isolation. But each to their own. In realty, I don't care who was worse. Bottom line is they both were shite and I'm glad to see the back of both of them. And I don't care who is more magnanimous in failure.
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Then I share the same view of you on these part.
 
MannyB said:
I think some are putting their hate for LvG ahead of actually assessing the job he and Moyes did?

In this thread LvG is usually described as arrorgant, stubborn, smug, a bully and a fraud. Whereas at worst, Moyes is usually deluded, clueless, out of his depth, a ditherer and his failures often dismissed with 'he tried'.

Maybe we need another thread asking who the bigger cnut is...


:lol:

A step dad who thinks he'll survive the drop and wants to do it with more of your loved ones for the next six years.
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Dion said:
LvG was a continual disappointing, like having a dad who promises loads but always manages to mess it up. Moyes was like watching your new step-dad drive the family car off a cliff with your mother and siblings in the back.
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:lol:

/thread for me. Perfectly summary of the situation.
 
Both were bad, but LVG was a little worse. He spent more money, and was given twice the time. Moyes was clueless and had no idea how to run a top club. Given some money and time he had potential to improve. LVG was an established coach, who was just too stubborn.

Also saying top 4 is hard as the manager of a top club is just sad. Look at Mourinho. A top coach knows if you don't believe you can win, your players won't either.

Who cares which teams you beat in the league if you don't win enough to win a title. I could care less if we lose to all the top teams, but beat all the bottom ones and win the league.
 
LVG for assuming he had earnt the right to select our next manager (Giggs).

I have to say though that interview with, 'and that includes you fat man' Still has me in stiches, just brilliant.
 
All 3 United said:
LVG for assuming he had earnt the right to select our next manager (Giggs).

I have to say though that interview with, 'and that includes you fat man' Still has me in stiches, just brilliant.
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To be honest i doubt that idea initially came from Van Gaal. He was basically told he had to take Giggs as his assistant for a reason. Others within the club ideally wanted Giggs as manager i think.
 
LVG was entertaining (outside of the pitch) and likable (outside of the pitch). His outdated methods and twattish arrogance and stubbornness lead to a failure. At least he gave us the FA Cup and some funny moments.

Moyes should have never been appointed at the first place. Blatantly out of his depth. It's like replacing the designer of Maserati with the ex designer of Pontiac.
 
I'd like to argue objectively against any points made by the "Moyes was less bad" group

1) Moyes got worse results - the difference might be tiny but it's a fact
2) LvG won a real trophy, Moyes did not (CS doesn't count - even if you want it to, the FA Cup wins out)
3) LvG signed better players (Shaw, Herrera, Schneid, Martial vs Mata and Afro)
4) LvG said less embarrassing things - again, no contest
5) LvG competed with or outclassed our direct rivals - Moyes was humiliated by them in every game - no contest
6) LvG played a whole bunch of youth players, who seemed to flourish, Moyes didn't (Rashford, TFM, CBJ vs Januzaj)

Playstyle, mindset, "we knew Moyes was shit", "LvG is a fraud", destroying Fergie's legacy etc are all subjective arguments.

I know football is about emotion and feeling but I find it impossible to look past such overwhelming factual evidence
 
Rafateria said:
We're not comparing BR to Budgie. We are debating Moyes and LvG so those two are totally irrelevant. As I said .. except in your head. God you ready come out with some wummish shite at times.
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Which is why I said 'like', dummy. It is 'like' saying hodgson is better than Brenda. In short, your statement wasn't right
 
Moyes.

LVG was still shite but in comparison to Moyes he was great. Got top 4 once, won us the FA Cup, blooded Rashford, TFM, Bo-Jack, etc... Bought Martial and Shaw.
 
I will give credit for Van Gaal given that he could keep De Gea for 4 more years after not being able to win the Premier League after 2012-2013.
 
ITT: a small group who can't remember the 2013/14 season properly.

Nothing touches it. The most spineless United side ever witnessed with a smug yet clueless bastard at the helm.
 
AR87 said:
There are too many other factors involved to simply look at points totals, year-to-year and draw a direct comparison like that.

1. Neither was good, but the team didn't give up on LVG which they absolutely did under Moyes. Neither was especially well liked by the squad, but LVG still commanded some respect from the players which Moyes didn't because of things like his absurd training methods focused on maintaining defensive shape without the ball and telling Rio Ferdinand to be more like Phil Jagielka.

2. LVG had plenty of flaws, but he understood and accepted the magnitude of managing United. Moyes said ridiculous things that no manager of United should ever think, let alone say such as "we tried to make it difficult for Newcastle" and "We aspire to be like City".

3. LVG's major letdown was giving his players little room to express themselves and sticking to an extremely rigid plan. Moyes had no plan. The match at OT against City under Moyes is the most clueless tactical performances from a United side I've ever seen, not because the plan sucked, but because there was no plan.

4. LVG bought good players, but often mismanaged them grossly by trying to shoehorn them into his preferred system, formation and style of play rather than adjusting to their strengths. Moyes bought Fellaini and Mata who addressed none of our needs and did little to enhance the quality of the side. In fact LVG got much better production out of Moyes' signings than he did.

5. Under LVG we blood more youth players that look set to have a future in the first team such as Rashford, Lingard, CBJ and TFM. Under Moyes we developed Januzaj who unfortunately, for reasons unrelated to Moyes, has stagnated tremendously.

6. We didn't get embarrassed by the best teams in the PL under LVG bar the one 3-0 loss at the Emirates which was an outlier. Under Moyes we lost 3-0 at home to City and Liverpool and were thrashed away by all the big clubs bar Arsenal.

Neither was good, but LVG's failures are more relative to the expectations we had of him given his CV whereas Moyes was just an abject failure at most every aspect of his job.
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Good post. End of discussion.
 
It's funny when people say 'Moyes inherited a squad of champions', and then in the next paragraph praise Van Gaal for 'clearing out our deadwood'. Was it a squad of 'champions' or was it 'deadwood' pulling above it's weight? Weird contradiction there. Or may be Moyes so bad that he turned champion players into deadwood within 10 months?

IMO, they were both equally terrible. The only difference is that we had to endure one for 10 months and the other for two fecking years. No big team, as far as I can remember, has played such a bland and uninspiring brand of football for three consecutive years.

Neither was suited to be the manager of this club. If Moyes tepidness was annoying, equally exasperating was VG's arrogance despite repeated failure. Both failed to acknowledge their own faults and were quick to throw everybody else under the bus.

The last three years were a continuing nightmare. Hopefully, it ends with Jose. Would hate to see a 'Who was worse: Moyes, Van Gaal or Jose' thread in 2 years time.
 
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Barbara Charles said:
Moyes always looked scared. Don't know if this is relevant.
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Erebus said:
Has to be Moyes. From day 1 he looked like a rabbit caught in headlights and there was simply no direction I could discern. Whilst things were bad with LVG I could see what he was trying to do - and that's a real advantage over Moyes - at least he had a plan.
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Where Moyes lost my support - and I presume that of many of the players - wasn't over the results per se, but that he never gave the impression that he had the self-belief to turn things around. That's what defines the best managers - to maintain confidence and strength in the face of adversity, because bad results will happen to all managers. Fergie had plenty of bad results but he always maintained that composure and self-confidence, the distinct impression that he was still in control.

That undoubtedly has an effect on the players, and it's probably why Moyes lost the players so early whereas LVG kept them onboard for a while longer. He could come across as brash or arrogant but ultimately at any club, the manager has to be able to command the respect of the players. He has to be able to walk into the dressing room and be the top dog, otherwise the players lose confidence and might even look to undermine him. LVG did this better than Moyes because he had previously managed top players at top clubs in Europe, whereas with Moyes there were question marks over his appointment from the very start.

Here is Moyes discussing the Newcastle game. Other than the oft-quoted "We're going to make it as hard and difficult for them as we possibly can", he also says "To try and win 3-4 games in a row is a hard thing to do in the Premier League". It's what he would have said as Everton manager, which goes to show how out of his depth he was in this job.
kr0nix said:
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In conclusion: LVG > Moyes, because if the manager himself doesn't believe he can turn it around, how can the players?
 
Moves was like being punched in the face and being told it's all we can hope for, Vangle was like being locked in the basement and being told it's for our own good.
 
stevoc said:
Well i disagree mate, LVG was past his best as a manager but still way better than Moyes. He would have been able to get more out of Fergusons side than Moyes did. Moyes lost the dressing room early into that season in my opinion with the bullshit he was spouting in the media and his daft archaic methods and the players just didn't fight for him.

For all Van Gaal's faults at no point right up until the end did it seem like the players were not fighting for him, he never lost the dressing room and there seemed to be a good team spirit in the squad.
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Naught wrong with disagreeing, Steve. But in the end it is a game of opinions isn't it? I think that his approach, methods and tactical ability would have translated even worse to that 13/14 squad. Even with the increased difficulty of the league that season.

At the end of the day, back on topic to the thread, the league is about how many you beat and not who you beat. So there are a lot of people saying he should get credit for beating the big teams but having a good record against the big teams means nothing when you're dropping points to dross that you can't roll over.

Somebody mentioned press conferences being "great" and/or "entertaining" this is a man who literally asked journalists to apologize to him and then walked out when they didn't. I was literally sitting mouth agape and stunned when I saw that. He would literally step back in his own shit talk in press conferences on the regular. It was the height of irritating.
 
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noodlehair said:
Van Gaal for me, though I should add that this miight just be down to us for some reason taking much longer to fire him. I suspect if Moyes had been given two full years and LVG less than one I'd probably still disike LVG but may have actually murdered Moyes.

There's a few things though.

- Firstly, Moyes got far less backing in terms of financial power, bringing players in, etc. He asked for a left back, a midfielder and Fellaini (for some reason). He got Fellaini far too late...then we bafflingly paid to not sign Baines and spent all summer not signing Fabregas, and then briefly not signing Herrera. Then he got Mata and a week later admitted he hadn't really thought about how to use him, which was infuriating. LVG on the other hand was allowed to sign every player under the sun, and pretty much did sign most of them. Then got rid of loads. Then after had the cheek to whine about not having the right players and the squad being imbalanced. Any semblence of sympathy he might have got for inheriting players he didn't want was destroyed when he started getting rid of the players HE signed, signing more of them, and then STILL whining about not having the right players. LVG got better backing than any other manager in the League while Moyes was let down horribly.

- Secondly, though I wouldn't consider Moyes likable, he was defnitely infitinely less dislikable than LVG. I felt sorry for him. It was like watching someone trying to crash land a plane despite having one hand tied and no knowledge of how to fly it. It was impossible to feel sorry for LVG because he was so full of himself, and full of constant bullshit. One week he says one thing, the next he's contradicting himself completely, yet still talking as everyone EXCEPT him is an idiot. I found him to be quite insufferably stupid, and there's few things more dislikable, or dangerous, then a stupid person that thinks their smart and is enough of a bully to be allowed to make decisions.

- Thirdly, yes Van Gaal had us finish higher, and brought more success (well, less failure) in general...but he had better players. He didn't have too contend with idiots like Rio being deliberately destructive. He had weaker opponents, and he had more luck (the amount of games we won despite not deserving to in his first season was genuinely astonishing). I didn't think our performances were any better under him. The odd game here and there at best. There wwas no plan evident. The word philosophy does not constitute a plan. Moyes had no plan either, but he didn't rebuild the entire squad or faff around with the entire infrastructure of the club in order to execute his non existent plan like LVG did.

The bottom lline is they were both shite, though. Their legacy between them is Marouane Fellaini, and some exra trees planted round the training ground (which ironically probably possess the same footballing ability as Fellaini)
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Ha. Very good. You're dead right about not having as long to appreciate Moyes' ineptness as we had to wallow in Van Gaal's death by a thousand backwards passes. Which must bias my opinion, at least a little bit.

Also, good point about Moyes not getting targets he identified. That's being put down 100% to his dithering but I think Woody has learned some harsh lessons since he took the reins, which Van Gaal and Mou benefitted from, while Moyes suffered through his learning curve. That "two for one" offer to Everton and the Hererra mystery negotiators clusterfeck being the two most obvious examples.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Also, good point about Moyes not getting targets he identified. That's being put down 100% to his dithering but I think Woody has learned some harsh lessons since he took the reins, which Van Gaal and Mou benefitted from, while Moyes suffered through his learning curve. That "two for one" offer to Everton and the Hererra mystery negotiators clusterfeck being the two most obvious examples.
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I'd forgotten about that! That was an absolutely ridiculous chain of events!
 
Insanity said:
It's funny when people say 'Moyes inherited a squad of champions', and then in the next paragraph praise Van Gaal for 'clearing out our deadwood'. Was it a squad of 'champions' or was it 'deadwood' pulling above it's weight? Weird contradiction there. Or may be Moyes so bad that he turned champion players into deadwood within 10 months?

IMO, they were both equally terrible. The only difference is that we had to endure one for 10 months and the other for two fecking years. No big team, as far as I can remember, has played such a bland and uninspiring brand of football for three consecutive years.

Neither was suited to be the manager of this club. If Moyes tepidness was annoying, equally exasperating was VG's arrogance despite repeated failure. Both failed to acknowledge their own faults and were quick to throw everybody else under the bus.

The last three years were a continuing nightmare. Hopefully, it ends with Jose. Would hate to see a 'Who was worse: Moyes, Van Gaal or Jose' thread in 2 years time.
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I believe that, by claiming that, most of them mean that Moyes inherited a side which had a very good momentum, especially in England. When Ferguson first arrived to OT he didn't only have to create a good side, he also had to instill a winning mentality into the first team. So, his task was not only to get good players but also players who would be able to carry the club on their shoulders and take it back to number one at a time when our fiercest rivals where completely out of sight. And although Ferguson was a proven winner (Aberdeen), it did take some time for him to actually get us to the top with a lot of players (among them some talented ones too like McGrath) being shown the door. Ferguson "cleared the deadwood" many more times since then with 1995 being the finest example but never compromised the team's performances. And Ferguson's sides could only be described as "squads of champions".

In this sense, Moyes had this job already done for him. That doesn't mean that some of our big game players weren't past their peak or that there wasn't need for injecting some real quality in the squad. Regardless of that, the players Moyes inherited had already "been there and done that", "the fear factor" of OT was a reality for any visiting team and United were the team to beat in England. But, as it proved, Moyes was the complete opposite to Ferguson. His tactical ineptness and his complete lack of man management skills and pulling power in the market led to disaster. This, of course, became a problem that LvG was unable to fix in two whole seasons.
 
TheRedDevil'sAdvocate said:
I believe that, by claiming that, most of them mean that Moyes inherited a side which had a very good momentum, especially in England. When Ferguson first arrived to OT he didn't only have to create a good side, he also had to instill a winning mentality into the first team. So, his task was not only to get good players but also players who would be able to carry the club on their shoulders and take it back to number one at a time when our fiercest rivals where completely out of sight. And although Ferguson was a proven winner (Aberdeen), it did take some time for him to actually get us to the top with a lot of players (among them some talented ones too like McGrath) being shown the door. Ferguson "cleared the deadwood" many more times since then with 1995 being the finest example but never compromised the team's performances. And Ferguson's sides could only be described as "squads of champions".

In this sense, Moyes had this job already done for him. That doesn't mean that some of our big game players weren't past their peak or that there wasn't need for injecting some real quality in the squad. Regardless of that, the players Moyes inherited had already "been there and done that", "the fear factor" of OT was a reality for any visiting team and United were the team to beat in England. But, as it proved, Moyes was the complete opposite to Ferguson. His tactical ineptness and his complete lack of man management skills and pulling power in the market led to disaster. This, of course, became a problem that LvG was unable to fix in two whole seasons.
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We had lost that by the time Moyes joined. Fergie's final season was notable by the number of teams we would usually steam-roll coming to OT and having a real go at us. We had a crazy number of games where we were getting dominated by mediocre teams only to pull out a result at the death (usually scored by Van Persie) Fergie retired at the perfect time. It was already painfully obvious that our team needed a major overhaul, despite that last herculean effort to win a trophy.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
We had lost that by the time Moyes joined. Fergie's final season was notable by the number of teams we would usually steam-roll coming to OT and having a real go at us. We had a crazy number of games where we were getting dominated by mediocre teams only to pull out a result at the death (usually scored by Van Persie) Fergie retired at the perfect time. It was already painfully obvious that our team needed a major overhaul, despite that last herculean effort to win a trophy.
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You're mixing tactics with results here, i believe. The latter years of the Ferguson era, especially after Ronaldo, were all about playing with double pivots in the midfield, sitting very deep in order to soak up the pressure and then use Scholes and Carrick's long passing abilities to hit on the counter. During his last period, Fegie's sides had no intent of pressing and therefore there was no use of dynamic partnerships in the midfield. Some didn't like it, it could definitely be described as "going against the grain" at a time when possession football was on the rise but it worked.

In 2012-13 we lost only three games at home in the PL and two more in Europe and only two of them were important (Spurs at the start of the season and Real Madrid), we scored 58 goals and conceded 25 in all competitions. Besides the 4-3 game against Newcastle, i can't remember when we needed a late goal to win a game at home in Fergie's last season. And while i agree that RvP's goals saved us numerous times, it just shows the winning spirit and the "never give up" attitude this team had and couldn't maintain under Moyes.
 
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