It wasn’t even that Moyes made one big mistake; it was an accumulation of mistakes. He slowly lost us. I didn’t enjoy playing under him: long before the end, I’d decided to leave the club if he was going to stay. But I found it all fascinating. I learnt a huge amount. It made me appreciate a lot of things about Fergie I’d taken for granted. If I ever become a manager the experience of my last season at United will stand me in good stead.
The league table never lies. In 2012–13 we won the league by 11 points. I was so proud; I’d come back from my injury problems, had one of my best-ever seasons and was picked for the PFA [Professional Footballers Association] team of the year. Under David Moyes I suddenly found myself out of the team and we finished seventh, 22 points behind City. I can see why the new man wanted to put his own stamp on things. But if it ain’t broke…
A lot of the time it felt as if he was just rubbing our fur the wrong way.
Like with the chips. Footballers are creatures of habit, and for as long as I can remember at Manchester United it was a ritual that we had low-fat chips the night before a game. We loved our chips. But Moyes comes in and, after his first week, he says we can’t have chips any more. We weren’t eating badly. In fact you’d struggle to find a more professional bunch of players than the ones at Manchester United in the summer of 2013. We were fit, had self-discipline and looked after ourselves diet-wise. Then suddenly, for no good reason we could see, it was ‘no chips’. It’s not something to go to the barricades over. But all the lads were pissed off. And guess what happened after Moyes left and Ryan Giggs took over for the last four games of the season? Moyes has been gone about 20 minutes, we’re on the bikes warming-up for the first training session without him and one of the lads says: ‘You know what? We’ve got to get onto Giggsy. We’ve got to get him to get us our fucking chips back.’
Here’s another tiny thing we were irritated by: the pre-match walk. Moyes had us going for 10-minute walks together the morning of a game. We’d never done it before; no one enjoyed it and no one liked it. He never asked us about it. Maybe it’s what he did at Everton, but we were all going: ‘Why are we doing this? What’s the point?’ It wasn’t helping us at all; we were only doing it for him.
I know some people will think we’re being prima donnas about these sort of things. They think: ‘Fucking footballers! All that money! What have they got to complain about?’ But that’s not how it works. If you’re not in a team environment, you won’t understand that a lot of what we do is a question of habit and feeling comfortable. You want to feel good with your surroundings. When lots of little things start changing it’s destabilising. It doesn’t matter if you are a footballer or working behind a machine in a factory: when you feel good in your working environment you tend to work better. You’re more relaxed. In the end the product is better.
A much bigger problem was his approach to tactics. Moyes obviously wanted us to change our style … but we were never quite sure what he wanted to change it to.
While we were on our pre-season Asian tour he told me and a couple of others that he wanted us to play a narrow 4–2–2–2 with the wide players coming inside. I remember thinking: ‘Have you not read up on this club’s history? This club was built on wingers! It only goes back about 100 years! Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Steve Coppell, Willie Morgan, George Best, David Pegg, Charlie Mitten, Billy Meredith … That’s quite a long tradition there!’ More to the point, what he was saying went totally against what any of the players here were used to. Playing 4–2–2–2 would mean revamping a big chunk of the squad which was built around wingers who were not the best at coming inside. We didn’t play well in the pre-season games, but we never really play well pre-season. Our form usually kicks in around Christmas and January so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I want him to do well because that means I’ll do well and we’ll have more success.
But somehow his innovations mostly led to negativity and confusion. Under Fergie, for example, before a game on a Saturday we always played a small-sided match on a small pitch on the Friday. We loved it. We’d get into the mood for the following day by expressing ourselves, having fun, trying stuff out. You got your touch right, experimented, got the feeling flowing. We’d done that for years and suddenly – again for no good reason – Moyes changed it by making us play two-touch. There wasn’t a strategy behind it; or, if there was, he never explained it to us well enough. Instead of enjoying these games, you’d hear the attackers moaning: ‘I hate this fucking two-touch …’ It went against the grain of how we played. It was especially bad for the forwards who liked to practise their skills and shots and movements; they felt restricted. It didn’t even have much to do with the way Moyes tried to get us to play. Even I was moaning about it and I’m a defender: you’d come off the pitch feeling blocked, frustrated, like you hadn’t had a chance to express yourself. We complained, but nothing changed. Then people wondered why we looked cramped and played without personality or imagination.
There was also the business of preparing to defend set pieces. It wasn’t something we’d ever spent much time on before. Fergie’s approach was always to focus on the other team’s weaknesses. We expected to win every game and he’d say things like ‘They’re rubbish in this area … this is how we’re going to destroy them.’ For years we were one of the best teams at not conceding goals from corners and free kicks. Very occasionally, if a team had a special play, we’d do something on that. With Rory Delap’s long throw-ins at Stoke, for example, Fergie would set us up and ask us, ‘Are you comfortable with this?’ Usually I’d mark Peter Crouch and leave Vida free to attack the ball. Or, if it went over Vida, I’d come and attack it. Just simple little things like that. For most games Fergie would leave the defending to us. We had it down: our method was simple, effective and something we always felt very secure about.
Yet with Moyes it was always how to stop the other side, and he was worried about other teams’ corners and free kicks. Before every game, he made a point of showing us videos of how dangerous the other team could be. On the morning of a game we’d spend half an hour on the training ground drilling to stop them. But our defensive record definitely did not improve. There was so much attention to the subject it suddenly became a worry: they must be fucking good at this, to have us spend all this time on it …
That was the different mentality: Moyes set us up not to lose whereas we’d been accustomed to playing to win every game. Apart from ‘Don’t lose’ I never thought Moyes had a philosophy he 100 per cent believed in and said ‘Right, this is how we’re going to play.’ Did he want to carry on with Fergie’s style or teach us his own style? Would we use wingers or keep things tight and play percentages? We never knew. I don’t even think he knew or, if he did, he never communicated it to us well enough.
The biggest confusion was over how he wanted us to move the ball forward. Often he told us to play it long. Some players felt they kicked the ball long more than at any time in their career. Sometimes our main tactic was the long, high, diagonal cross. It was embarrassing. In one home game against Fulham we had 81 crosses! I was thinking: why are we doing this? Andy Carroll doesn’t actually play for us! The whole approach was alien and we didn’t even win the game.
Other times Moyes wanted lots of passing. He’d say: ‘Today I want us to have 600 passes in the game. Last week it was only 400.’ Who fucking cares? I’d rather score five goals from ten passes! There came a point where I was thinking: ‘Do you actually want us to win, because if you’re going to keep changing things it’s obviously going to reduce your chances of winning.’
Why was he trying to change us anyway? We can’t be too bad: we won the league by 11 points a few months ago! If I were you, I’d just get a couple of trophies under my belt first before trying to change everything. That would make a bit more sense.
At the beginning of the season Moyes told me: ‘I want to go for experienced players.’ After about eight games, we weren’t playing particularly
well, he said: ‘OK, I’m going to have a look at the youngsters.’ That’s fair enough. If I was a young player, I’d want old guys out of the team as quick as possible too. But he overdid it. I suddenly went from being one of the best centre-backs in the league to not even travelling with the team and all the defenders were confused. A lot was made up about Moyes using Jagielka as an example to me and other defenders, but that never happened at all!
‘If you’re under any sort of pressure I want you to make sure you’ve always got that ball out to the side,’ he told us. ‘I don’t want you to take any risks.’
He was bringing the mentality of a smaller club. I never had the feeling Moyes knew how to speak like a Man United manager. You’d pick up the paper and see him saying unbelievable things like we ‘aspire’ to be like Man City or Liverpool were ‘favourites’ against us. If you want to survive, he’s right: don’t take risks. But this wasn’t Everton; it was Man United. We don’t want to survive. We want to win. Of course, when you’re in your own box, you don’t take risks. But when you’re on the halfway line or in the opponents’ half risks do need to be taken sometimes, especially tight, high-level games, if you’re going to win.
It was as if he had no confidence in our abilities. Generally, with all due respect, the players at Man United are at a higher level than those at Everton. But we had the feeling he didn’t trust us to execute things on the field. Even for me the feeling was: he doesn’t trust me, he doesn’t believe in me. No wonder players weren’t going out and producing.
The mixed messages were even worse. Sometimes he’d say, ‘I want you to pass the ball,’ other days it was: ‘I don’t want you to pass the ball.’ What the fuck do you want us to do, man? In the pool you heard a lot of guys complaining: ‘I just don’t know what he wants.’ He had me doubting everything. Remember, we’re all professionals so want to do what our manager is asking us to do; we want to please him; we want him to take us on and make us champions again. Whatever he says, we’ll do.
In September, after Man City beat us 4–1 he called me and Vida into a meeting with the video analysis guy. ‘I want to show you a few things,’ said the manager. He had about 15 clips to show us, but we never got past clip five. We talked for about 40 minutes and came out none the wiser. It got pretty heated and I had the feeling he just wanted to cut the whole meeting short because he didn’t like confrontation. That was another difference: Fergie would dig out anyone if he felt it would improve the team – but bad feeling would never be allowed to fester.
Ostensibly the idea for the video clips meeting was to understand what had gone wrong for City’s goals. In one instance Moyes said: ‘You could have done better here, you could have been tighter on Aguero …’ And I said: ‘OK, but Aguero is one of the quickest in the league and in the build-up there wasn’t enough pressure on their midfield.’ My point was that, if they’ve got players good enough to put the ball anywhere they want, going ultra-tight on Aguero was asking for trouble. The ball would just be played behind me and Aguero would be clean through. It would be better to hope the ball will be played to Aguero’s feet. That way I can at least get tight behind him and stop him turning. But Moyes wouldn’t answer the point. He kept saying: ‘Yeah, but you should have been tighter.’
We held our hands up. ‘Yes, OK,’ I said ‘there were points in the game where we could have defended better,’ but we were trying to say it wasn’t just a problem with the defence. Vida and I were getting opened up because the shape wasn’t right; the whole team wasn’t defending correctly. For their first goal, I’d headed the ball out but it had come back at us too easily; no one had put pressure on Matija Nastasić, Samir Nasri or Aleksanda Kolarov earlier in the move. I was trying to say that the best way to defend is to stop attacks at source or, failing that, to get into a good solid shape. We used to be so strong at that. But we weren’t on the same page at all.
At one point I said: ‘Look, if you want me to go tight, I’ll go tight. That’s the easiest thing for me to do as a defender. If that’s what you want me to do, I’ll do that. Just tell me!’ And he was like: ‘Yes, but I also want you to …’ It was so confusing! Maybe he had a good point, but he never got it across. Me and Vida came out of there and looked at each other. ‘I don’t know what the fuck he just asked us to do,’ I said to my teammate.
We just wanted clear and concise information, but everything was mixed. Some days it was ‘Yeah, let’s play wingers.’ Did we think he believed it? No. Did we think he believed that he wanted us to pass the ball out from the back? No.
He’d tell me to come out with the ball – but kick it diagonal if there’s nothing on. To my way of thinking, if there’s nothing on, that probably means there’s a problem in the team. Are we set up right? Is the movement good enough? Yes, of course there are times you have to belt the ball away. But if you’re trying to create a pattern of play that shouldn’t be your first thought. So I’m coming out with the ball and have no one to pass to. What am I supposed to do? Kick it long? Produce an unbelievable bit of magic as a centre-half? Sometimes I’d be about to pass the ball and think does he actually want me to pass the ball here? I doubted everything. Was that what he wanted? I’d pass the ball and think was that OK? I’d take up position on the pitch and worry about it. Eventually in some games we’d just switch to autopilot and play the way we know from the old times.
Of course, there were aspects of his approach that impressed me. One of Moyes’s first statements when he arrived was that he was going to focus on getting us to work harder, physically. ‘I’m going to get you fitter,’ he told the squad, ‘I’m going to get you running harder.’ He definitely stepped up the volume and intensity of training. He was enthusiastic; his work ethic was great. You could see how much he wanted to be a success at United. We had some good training sessions, and he was always present. Where Fergie usually left the training to people like Brian Kidd, Carlos Queiroz or Rene Meulensteen, Moyes was much more hands-on.
But another thing he told us very early went on to cause a lot of trouble. He said his method was to announce the team on the Friday or the Saturday before the game – and refuse to talk about it. If we weren’t happy about being left out, then tough. He wasn’t going to put an arm round your shoulder and he wouldn’t be giving explanations. He said: ‘If you’ve got something to say, come and see me Monday.’ In other words, long after the game. That was a huge break away from Fergie’s way of doing things.
Again, I thought: ‘I’m sure that worked fine at Everton but things are different here.’ At Everton you’ve only probably got 13 players in the squad who believe they should be playing every week, based on their ability. Most of the others in the squad are either young players or players happy to be on the bench. That’s no disrespect to Everton; it was like that at West Ham when I was a kid. That’s how it works at clubs just below the very top. But at Manchester United you’ve got 22 to 25 internationals who have won titles and cups and they all believe they should start. Common sense should tell you you’ve got to treat that workforce differently. Everton play 40 or 50 games a season, and only a few of those are high-intensity games against top teams. United play more like 60 games a season and a lot of those are big, must-win games. So a part of the art of being Manchester United manager is to rotate your squad and keep everyone happy.
Fergie was brilliant at that. He managed to keep the whole squad feeling involved. Take Chicharito [Javier Hernández]: he’s a terrific player and his goal scoring record guarantees 15 to 20 goals a season. But Ferguson didn’t actually start him in too many games; he preferred to use him as an impact player who’d win or rescue games at places like Stoke or Aston Villa. Javier did that a lot and he was happy for three years. All of a sudden, Moyes starts treating him differently and Chicarito’s confidence goes. You could see the way he carried himself changed.
You have to respect and appreciate the fact that players have egos, and attacking players are the ones with the bigger egos. You need to give players the a
rm around the shoulder. Players live to play and we feel disappointed and hurt if we’re not picked. Fergie would say: ‘I’m not picking you this week because I’m saving you for next week.’ The psychology was so clever: ‘I’ll give you a rest and give someone else a little chance, because I have to rotate the squad. But don’t you worry. You get yourself ready, son. You get yourself ready for next week.’ You forget about the game he’s dropped you for and focus on next week.
Fergie was human about it; he was clever. He’d say: ‘This is difficult for me, I don’t enjoy doing this.’ Sometimes you’d think: nah, that’s bollocks I don’t care what you’re saying. One time he dropped me for a Liverpool game because we had Chelsea coming up. I was like: ‘Not playing at Liverpool? But that’s one of the biggest games of the season!’ And he goes: ‘I can’t risk it because we have a Champions League game coming up.’ At first, I was just angry. Then I thought: ‘Yeah, but he still respects me as a footballer; he still believes I can play at one of the top teams, so he can’t not like me anymore.’ Then I’d be alright about it.
Most of the problems with Moyes seemed to come together for the match that effectively ended our season: the second leg of our Champions League quarter-final with Bayern Munich. In the previous round against Olympiacos we’d pulled off a great escape. In the first leg we were awful and lost 2–0, but in the return game at Old Trafford we turned it around and won 3–0.
By the time we went to Munich we had no chance of finishing in the top four of the Premier League and this was the last competition we could win. In the first game we’d drawn 1–1 and on the balance of chances really should have won. For almost the first time in the season our tactics were clear: Bayern were reigning champions and were still considered the best team in Europe so we played compact and looked to counter. For once Moyes gave us clear instructions: when I won the ball, I was going to look to play the ball behind their defenders. It was the first time I felt the whole team understood what the manager wanted. But even then he made a mistake playing Giggsy as a left-winger. Giggsy was 40 years old; how was he supposed to play left wing against a fullback bombing on all the time? He found it pretty taxing. But, as I say, things didn’t go too badly. A week later came the game that was our last chance to save the season, maybe even David Moyes’s job.
#2Sides: My Autobiography Page 11