Jose Mourinho's Manchester United sparkle, David Moyes's would have grown tediously functional

When David Moyes returned to Old Trafford on Boxing Day the reception he received spoke volumes.

There was no rapturous welcome for a former manager. There was none of the warmth that tumbled from the stands to greet Robin van Persie when he returned with Fenerbahce earlier in the season, for instance.

But neither was there hostility, anger, rudeness.

When he walked from the tunnel to the dugouts past the front of the South Stand, beyond a couple of nerds asking for a selfie, the reaction was largely polite indifference. Here was someone the average United fan has no personal beef against. After all he seems a decent, honest, straight-forward kind of bloke.

What was perfectly obvious in their response was that they would just rather forget that he ever was the manager of their club.

Midwinter is always the time for ghost stories, so let’s for a moment imagine that Moyes had got his wish and remained in control at United beyond April 2014. Where would the club now be? Would it be any worse off than now in the rebuilding process that was inevitably to follow the end of the Ferguson era? After all, sixth in the Premier League is hardly a vast improvement on the seventh place Moyes left them in.

If the Sunderland side he brought to Old Trafford are indicative, then United would be organised. He would have them well drilled at corners. Rarely would they be undone by a set-piece. They would be functional, tough to break down, rational. And about as compelling viewing as a box set of the One Show.

In his latest insistence that he was hard done-by at United, Moyes claimed he had not been properly backed by the board, that he been close to signing Gareth Bale and Cesc Fabregas.

But close is not enough.

Lacking the gambler’s instinct of his predecessor, he was not swift or decisive enough to spend the money to rebuild on star names. Dithering Dave was not a nickname given by chance.

The fact is there would have been no Henrikh Mkhitarayan or Paul Pogba under him. It is hard to imagine Zlatan Ibrahimovic weighing up his options for one last move at the end of his glittering career and thinking: you know what? I’d really love the chance to work under Moysie.

Failing to bring in the big names, the manager would instead have continued to buy in those he trusted, developing a steady flow from Goodison. Baines would now be at left back, Coleman at right, Jagielka in the middle (after all, as he was anxious to demonstrate to Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic, Jagielka can defend a corner). Ross Barkley might have come too, forming an ex-Evertonian midfield partnership with Marouane Fellaini and gradually disappointing.

But still, one thing is for sure: after three years of Moyes leadership, United would have been hard to beat.

But, as was demonstrated under the woeful leadership of Moyes’s successor Louis van Gaal, baleful functionality is not the United way. What is required is fizz, buzz, entertainment. But there would have been little hope of the edge of the seat being frequently visited territory had Moyes remained in charge until doomsday.

Football management is a tough, unforgiving profession. So often we see managers wrongly evicted from the dugout by trigger-happy chairmen. You only have to look at Swansea and the consequence of the ludicrous decision to dismiss Garry Monk to see how badly poor judgment about a club’s principal employee can backfire.

But the more you see of what has happened subsequently, the more you come to realise that – harsh though it is to say of someone who only ever gave of his best – United’s board were absolutely right to remove Moyes from office when they did. Nothing positive would have come from sticking by him.

The fact was they had unwittingly been sold a pup by Ferguson, who had made the dire mistake of believing that because he and Moyes shared similar upbringing then they must be similar operators.

So quickly was he disabused of that assumption, as Moyes was horribly exposed as being promoted way above his level of competence, that the theory began to form that Ferguson had deliberately recommended a numpty so as not to jeopardise his own legend.

You only have to attend a United fixture at the moment to get a sense of the difference between having the wrong man in charge and having the right man there. Under Moyes, under Van Gaal too, there was nothing to thrill, nothing to excite, nothing to set the pulse racing. These days under Mourinho, there is a gathering sense of anticipation.

With Pogba and Ibrahimovic forming a pulsating core, with Carrick and Herrera a solid base, with Mkhitarayan, Mata, Lingard and Martial all offering hints of gilding, this is a side at last looking like one built in the traditions of the club, one facing the New Year buoyed by a huge swell of optimism.

Unlike so many of those bought in by the two men who came before him, all of Mourinho’s buys have sparkled (albeit that Eric Bailly is currently absent). And the likelihood is those who come in the future will add weight and scale to the squad, rather than arriving as Fellaini, Angel di Maria or Radamel Falcao did in something approaching blind panic.

Imagine for a moment if the board had done what David Moyes says they should have done and stuck by the Scot: he would now be more than halfway through the six-year contract he was awarded on his appointment at Old Trafford.

There can be no-one who believes the club would be in a better position with him in control than they are now in with Mourinho at the helm.

And the sad thing is, you suspect that in moments of private contemplation, Moyes would agree.