When David Moyes finally sits down to compose the story of his football life, the afternoon he took Manchester United to Everton will surely feature, because it was his very worst of times. An experience, 11 years ago, which left him ‘destroyed,’ he said back then.
There were the jeers of Evertonians, angered by the way he’d come back as United manager for some of the club’s jewels. The frosty reception from former colleagues. The goon dressed in a Grim Reaper costume waving an imitation scythe behind him in the United dugout: an attention-seeking stunt by a bookmaker.
United sacked Moyes a few days after the 2-0 defeat which had brought the forces of holy hell raining down on him, and as his career lurched through the convulsions of Real Sociedad and Sunderland, there was a prurient fascination taken in how much more indignity he could endure.
When he sat down at a press conference staged to introduce him as West Ham manager at the London Stadium in 2017, the occasion quickly became an inquisition into his professional capabilities. Moyes, a proud man, bore this with equanimity.
He was five days off his 51st birthday when United dispensed with him and football, a world where judgments come fast and good men are written off, concluded that was him done. He was consigned to the scrap-yard with those vicious little epithets like ‘cautious’ and ‘safe’ and ‘pragmatic’ — which damn you when ‘bright young European coaches’ are coming through.
Except, Moyes, 61, wasn’t done, of course — and this afternoon, nearly 4,000 days since the Grim Reaper, he will come full circle, receiving United at Goodison Park as Everton’s manager.
David Moyes has brought the joy back to Everton and they could get the better of Manchester United – his former side
He was mocked while managing United and sacked just days after being ridiculed by somebody in a Grim Reaper mask
Now, Moyes is thriving again, and proving the naysayers wrong with his tactical imagination
Older, wiser, more collegiate and reflective. He has more tactical imagination than back then and has quietly deconstructed the inherent prejudice against British football managers of a certain age.
Pragmatism? Well, that would have been handy for United at Tottenham on Sunday when Ruben Amorim, a ‘bright young European coach’ 21 years his junior, unproven at elite level, put Casemiro and Bruno Fernandes in United’s central midfield to such catastrophic effect.
No one will admit it, of course, but United could use a little Moyes, right now. So could West Ham, another club who discarded him like an old rag — twice. They offered him a new contract one week and withdrew it after some poor results a few weeks later — to hell with how that undermined him.
His supposed conservatism was unpopular. Yet West Ham’s grim travails under Julen Lopetegui and even bleaker football under Graham Potter, barely managing a shot on goal in defeats by Crystal Palace and Brentford, give perspective. West Ham won’t be cherishing the idea of visiting Goodison a few weeks from now.
Moyes has taken Everton above United and West Ham, with as many wins in six games since his return to Everton as Amorim has managed in 13 games and three months as United manager. That feels like vindication.
He takes a win ratio of 66.7 per cent into this weekend, against Amorim’s 28.5 and Potter’s 20. He’s got Everton going the extra mile: 12 per cent more duels won and nearly 50 per cent more aerial duels per game, Stats Perform’s data shows.
But he’s also brought more out of the players in possession. Getting the forward Beto to run on to balls, rather than merely employing him aerially. Deploying the Danish loanee Jesper Lindstrom on the right, rather than his less natural left, where Sean Dyche used him.
The question of which flank the player feels is his best is the first thing he and Moyes discussed when they met. That encounter is captured on the club’s Everton Unseen YouTube series, in which Moyes seems struck by the sheer scale of Finch Farm’s expansion in the years since he left. ‘The pitches are better!’ he remarks.
People were willing to declare Moyes finished when things didn’t go his way at Old Trafford
He has been derided for his supposed conservatism even when he has brought success
But United could use a little Moyes right now, as they continue to falter under Ruben Amorim
Under his tutelage, the Toffees have won four of their six games and leapfrogged United
He has cut a more optimistic figure than Sean Dyche for the Toffees’ final season at Goodison Park this term
Against Liverpool, he had Everton cutting off the supply from Ryan Gravenberch. In open play, Everton are beginning passing sequences higher up the pitch. It’s football intelligence. Had Amorim played like this, we’d be proclaiming him a genius.
There’s a human intelligence, too. After Dyche’s depressing narrative about Everton’s ambitions for their last Goodison season counting for nothing, Moyes’s embrace of this season’s historical resonance has been like a warm breeze drifting in from the Mersey. He gave Everton the name ‘The People’s Club’, first time around. Now he’s restored their dignity.
That ambition is reaching his players. The young Irish defender Jake O’Brien, strangely overlooked by Dyche yet flourishing under Moyes, said after the win at Brighton last month: ‘He’s made things, not easy, but a lot clearer. There’s more confidence now. Togetherness, just to know we’re not just going to sit back.’
Defender Jarrad Branthwaite feels the same, explaining that while under Dyche there was no attacking plan and a sense that ‘if we attack, it’s a bonus’, there is now a focus on attacking situations.
It seems Moyes’s management is more collegiate, 12 years on from his departure for Old Trafford. The promotion of Leighton Baines from Under 18s manager to the first-team set-up was one of his first appointments. Taken with David Lucas’ elevation to the senior set-up from a role as head of academy goalkeeping, the links between the youth and senior set-ups have been strengthened.
Set-piece coach Charlie Adam, recruited after he left Fleetwood, has delivered an impact, though knee surgery this month to Dwight McNeil and Iliman Ndiaye’s injury have deprived Moyes of set-piece specialists. Branthwaite’s free-kick for Beto’s goal in the derby came from the defender’s presence of mind, rather than any plan.
Moyes’s collegiality, also in evidence at West Ham, seems a product of the ambassadorial role for UEFA, identifying tactical trends and meeting with continental clubs, which has been important to him for many years.
There is certainly light and shade in the methods of a manager who has always demanded an immense commitment from players and is still making the daily commute from Lytham to Finch Farm, a two-and-a-half-hour round trip. The squad were given until Wednesday off this week. United’s players were also enjoying down-time on Wednesday, with a team-bonding trip to the bowling alley at Altrincham.
The Scot has got a tune out of Beto, making him chase balls rather than just competing aerially
Young Irish defender Jake O’Brien is flourishing under the collegiate 61-year-old manager
Jarrad Branthwaite enjoys how Moyes has a plan for attacking rather than just sitting back
He called Everton ‘the People’s Club’ when he first arrived and is now restoring their dignity
Moyes refuses to visit the new Bramley-Moore Dock stadium until they have secured survival
A measure of the respect Moyes commands from outsiders came after that Goodison derby. As a melee unfolded in the tunnel at the end, Virgil van Dijk and Curtis Jones stopped to shake his hand.
What, he was asked ahead of this weekend, is the difference between the Moyes managing Everton again now, and the one who left for United? ‘Maybe a bit calmer,’ he replied.
‘A bit of that comes as you get older. You can’t be quite as full on. It’s very hard for me to go to every Under 21 game and Under 18 games now, which I have done in the past. I’m also using more people to help me, so it’s not all left to the manager. Most teams have that now.
‘So have I changed? Maybe a bit. Things change and you’ve got to try to change with them. Sometimes a bit more experience helps. Sometimes you can calm yourself down. Maybe I’m not having to fight the world all the time now, which when you first come in you feel as if you need to.’
Asked about this week’s Bramley-Moore Dock stadium test event, Moyes replied: ‘I’ve said I’m not going to go there until it’s confirmed that we’re a Premier League club.’ He is not allowing himself to rest on laurels.
Dare we think ‘what might have been?’ had United given Moyes a little longer? Perhaps not. There were some excruciating press conferences there at that time, too. It felt like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Yet his United win ratio was only marginally worse than Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s and not worlds away from that of Louis van Gaal, who both took United to Goodison and were thrashed. The difference is that he was given 34 games – vastly fewer than either of them.
Had Moyes worked for David Gill, who as chief executive helped guide United through the great Sir Alex Ferguson years, rather than the chaotic Ed Woodward, he might have been given longer to build something.
Ifs, but and maybes. What matters is that Moyes has found his place again. The ‘Moyesiah’ wears the look of a man who has come home. He deserves that.