The end of David Moyes? Sunderland could become the new Derby

On the day when it came to announce Nemanja Vidic was leaving Manchester United back in February 2014, David Moyes was agonising over how to phrase it. He didn’t want to use the word “mutual”, because it felt like a stock explanation that people by now see through, he decided against it. “Nah, I can’t say that.”

Moyes then went out and said it 17 times over the course of two media briefings.

To watch the broadcast now is to almost see a psychological experiment where someone is told not to think of a certain word but, under pressure, can think of nothing else. In the glare of cameras and struggling, he desperately reached for what he could. The determined stare only betrayed a man out of his depth, stripped down and exposed.

It was a sight that was by then commonplace at United, and has become so in Moyes’ career. He now seems to regularly have that startled expression, as if struggling to figure out the problems so frequently manifesting in front of him.

It is a world away from the utterly assured figure he cut during his peak at Everton, up to around 2008-10.

He has instead become a figure now regularly mocked, and that is rather sad, a bit of a fable for the modern game when you consider the course of his career. Moyes has - in the space of three years - gone from the career high of being chosen for the biggest job in football, who were then Premier League champions, to the low of lying bottom of that league and apparently unable to lift them.

You could call it the Peter principle in football except what is so striking is that Moyes has not even returned to his pre-United level or anything like it. He has plummeted way below it and there is reasonable talk that his Sunderland could well break Derby County’s 2007-08 record for the lowest points in a Premier League season. After nine games of that campaign, Paul Jewell’s team had five points, and ended up with 11. Sunderland currently have two.

The wonder is how it got quite that bad, how his proudest moment ended up so profoundly ruining his effectiveness. There have been other managers who failed in big jobs, after all, but still rebuilt themselves elsewhere. Even Roy Hodgson made West Brom respectable after the disaster of his appointment with Liverpool. Steve McLaren went from England to winning a Dutch title with Twente.

In other words, there was still that credibility.

Part of the issue with Moyes, however, might be the specific trajectory of his career. Long before Ferguson anointed him, after all, there was already talk he had run his course at Everton. His last cup match at Goodison Park - and thereby last chance of silverware - ended with a 3-0 rout at the feet of the Wigan side of his eventual replacement, Roberto Martinez. There were already strong arguments that his stability-first management was out of step with the modern game, that the top ended needed more innovative attacking coaching that he didn’t really offer.

This was very quickly and very painfully made clear at United, with a series of dismal displays. Club sources were all too willing to complain about the limited nature of his attacking coaching, and how this wasn’t really fit for a club like United, or anyone close to them. The nadir was the 2-2 draw at Fulham, and the record-breaking - but, crucially, not chance-making - 81 crosses.

It became a joke.

And that is perhaps part of the reason why Moyes’ other qualities haven’t worked elsewhere either. It isn’t even like he has infused lesser teams with stability, as was supposed to be his level.

While there was an initial effect at Real Sociedad, and Moyes deserves great credit for going outside his comfort zone to a new experience, the complaint very quickly made in San Sebastian was that he never embraced what was needed when moving away. He never threw himself into the culture, while providing his own influence, in the way the best football emigres do.

In short, he seemed stuck in Finch Farm 2009. He kept trying to get the team to play his way, but that only led to complaints that were already sounding all too familiar.

At the start of the 2015-16 season, midfielder David Zurutuza argued “there are lots of things missing, not just the final pass… we’re having doubts, we’re lacking an idea”.

By the time Moyes was sacked, a few months later, they were lacking elementary competitiveness. The Las Palmas players who inflicted his final Spanish defeat felt La Real were among the easiest teams they played.

It has been much the same at Sunderland. Moyes’ teams have become the softest of soft touches. Whatever else has happened in his career, that is a world away from the hard-bitten sides they used to be.

A Moyes team used to be almost guaranteed to give you a game.

It is as if the United experience has stripped him of the confidence to imbue a side with that quality, as if he himself is now seen in a different way. He just can't command the same response.

He is no longer seen as the manager who did so respectably at Everton. He is the one who failed to spectacularly at United, and represented such a bad choice.

Moyes needs to change that. He needs a win. It’s become that simple, even if getting it has become very complicated.

Otherwise, that “mutual” word may be used once again, to explain another departure.

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