Progress Since Moyes?

Two years on from David Moyes' sacking, Manchester United supporters are still waiting to see significant progress, writes Adam Bate.

The announcement that Manchester United had sacked David Moyes was greeted with relief by many of the club's supporters at the time. Even the share price rose to its highest level since Sir Alex Ferguson's final month at the helm. The blip was over.

There was logic in believing that the blame lay entirely with Moyes. After all, United had been Premier League champions the previous season. And it was impossible to regard his haul of 57 points from 34 games as anything but failure. But two years and more than £200m in transfer spending later, United have 59 points from 34 games. Some blip.

It's a damning indictment of a club that appears to have spent much of the intervening period stuttering from one mistake to the next. At least Moyes could point to the challenges of being Ferguson's immediate replacement. There was a Champions League quarter-final, too. That remains their best effort in the competition since reaching the final in 2011.

The accepted wisdom at the time was that it would be easier for the man after the man after Ferguson. But there's been precious little evidence of that, with Louis van Gaal on the receiving end of much criticism. Indeed, while it might have seemed as though Moyes had broken every unwanted record going, Van Gaal has found plenty more to add to the list.

For Moyes, there was a first league defeat against Stoke in 30 years. Van Gaal duly delivered the second. A first home defeat by Swansea came under Moyes. Van Gaal matched it in his very first game. Oh for the heady heights of a Capital One Cup semi-final defeat now - Van Gaal's team have been eliminated by lower-league opposition in consecutive seasons.

Sometimes new records have been set rather than merely repeated. Moyes might have lost three games in a row in 2014, the club's worst run of results in well over a decade, but Van Gaal was able to chalk up four consecutive defeats when beaten at Stoke on Boxing Day the following year. United hadn't managed that in a single season since 1961.

When Norwich triumphed at Old Trafford in December, it was the first time a newly-promoted side had won at Old Trafford in more than a decade. And yet, the warning signs were there given that United had lost at fellow new boys Bournemouth only one week earlier. What United fans once saw as formalities, they've learned to now see as potential problems.

All of which puts a different spin on Moyes' truncated season in charge. The apparent folly of replacing the country's most successful-ever manager with a man who - then as now - was waiting for his first major trophy was supposed to be the low point. But despite Van Gaal's more impressive CV, United's issues have not simply gone away.

How culpable can Moyes be in that? For all the feeling that Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic might have been retained, it's now clear that both had reached the end of their journey. Nor can the Scot be blamed for Robin van Persie's sharp decline. Time has shown that the squad was in a state of flux with senior men at the end of their usefulness.

But if the squad was in need of an overhaul, Moyes was not the man who botched that particular job. His only major signings were Marouane Fellaini and Juan Mata, and while the former in particular has failed to find favour among the fans, both did start in last week's win over Aston Villa. By way of comparison, subsequent signings have been and gone.

All of which should slightly shift the perspective on Moyes' time at the club. Rather than a blip caused by a man over-promoted in line with the Peter principle, it now feels as if his struggles foreshadowed a deeper malaise. One tied not only to Ferguson but the departure of David Gill and the club's very management structure itself.

A sequence of six wins in eight Premier League games offers the opportunity to quell such concerns. United are still scrapping for Champions League qualification and Van Gaal would be entitled to regard an FA Cup win - the club's first in 12 years - as redemption of sorts.

But for Moyes, the ongoing battle to restore Manchester United's erstwhile status as the strongest team in the land has certainly taken the edge off his own struggles in the role. The waste and the worry continues. And so, while the comparison with Ferguson remains as unfavourable as ever, those comparisons with successor Van Gaal aren't nearly so damning.

Credit: Skysports.com