Something became crystal clear yesterday at the end of a rather extraordinary weekend of Premiership football: Manchester United simply do not have what it takes to retain their title.
The reason is pretty simple really and comes down to David Moyes’ dithering and lack of ruthlessness in the transfer market.
It sounds odd to say that about a man who acquitted himself so well at Everton for over a decade.
His one area of weakness was that too often he failed to capitalise on a good season by reinforcing his personnel early enough in the transfer window and much of the progress that had been done the season before was undone.
In any event United are a rather different kettle of fish.
The huge weight of expectation does not give him the luxury he had at Everton to have those ‘my way or the highway’ type conversations with the chairman or the fans. Rightly or wrongly success is expected, even demanded, by fans who have been over-indulged in the pleasures of victory for 20 odd years.
Everton fans will tell you that it was usual during the Moyes era for the whole transfer window to pass without a signing and for there to then be a flurry on deadline day. Sound familiar United fans?
In the summer there were regular noises from Old Trafford about this target or that target and yet no signings materialised. Then on the last day, as an act of desperation as much as anything, he paid over the odds for Marouane Fellaini from his old club.
Fellaini is a decent player and in due course will do a job for United, but it’s a fact that the club paid £4million more for him at the end of the transfer window than they would have done had they activated his release clause by the end of July.
Moyes obviously knew about the clause and its expiration date because he was manager at the time it was signed.
It must be hard to take after two and a half decades of decisive and often incisive management to seemingly have a ditherer in charge of your team! It’s bad enough for some United fans that he’s not Sir Alex and he certainly didn’t help his cause with a poor first period in his job.
Well, this week the chickens really came home to roost. No Robin van Persie, Nemanja Vidic or Michael Carrick and forced to rely on a rather unconvincing central midfield duo of Fellaini and Tom Cleverley, United simply did not have the ruthlessness on the pitch that was require to see the game out against a committed Cardiff team.
Indeed, had the referee done his job and sent Wayne Rooney off for his show of petulance, the game may well have been beyond their rather anaemic team. As it was they simply did not have enough in the locker to see the game out and continue what had been a decent run.
Their recent form has in some ways papered over the cracks and allowed the fans, players and management to slip back into the complacent belief that success is their right. Well, as Liverpool fans will no doubt tell you, it isn’t.
To make matters worse for Moyes, the noisy neighbours are starting to get rather loud again. In complete contrast, Manchester City had a rather good transfer window and signed a number of very good players, two of whom scored in the 6-0 demolition of top-four contenders Tottenham.
The moral here is: do your business early. City did and they did it well.
It’s right to say that they are not firing on all cylinders yet. Their away form is poor for a start, but there are real signs that Pellegrini’s revolution is starting to reap rewards. His treatment of Joe Hart, who was good enough to play for England but not good enough to play for City this week, has revealed the type of ruthlessness that his counterpart at Old Trafford needs to start to show.
The reason why signing payers early at this level is really twofold. First, they get time to acclimatise to their new club and get used to playing a new system. This is particularly crucial when there’s a new management team.
Second, they aren’t Champions League-tied as many players of quality might be if you sign them in January.
As it stands this morning United are seven points behind league leaders Arsenal. There’s no suggestion that Moyes is going to lose his job any time soon but there is no doubt that the fans’ patience will start to run out if performances like the one against Cardiff keep happening.
Ultimately he, like every other manager, will be judged on the results on the pitch but a crucial part of that is the players that come and go from the club.
The failure to add any real strength to the squad in the summer transfer window was a major error, because when key players like Vidic or Carrick are missing there is only a very limited and limiting choice of replacements for Moyes to choose from.
The manager suffers from the fact that he has never won a trophy in his managerial career (the Community Shield doesn’t really count and pretending it does is a bit desperate) and he needs to seriously up his game.
If he fails, the goodwill handed to him by the outgoing Sir Alex Ferguson will be chalked off just as quickly as the lead did on two occasions at Cardiff at the weekend.
Image courtesy of Sky Sports via YouTube, with thanks.
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