MOYES: I’M READY TO WORK THE PLAYERS UNTIL THEY CRY
...BUT WILL IT END IN TEARS FOR NEW HAMMERS BOSS?
There was poetry all around as David Moyes sat down to talk yesterday. Cast in iron behind him were words apparently once used to describe the experience of urging Bobby Moore, Geoff hurst and Martin Peters to victory — ‘wishing through bated breath, the scene set for folklore’.
An identical structure in his eyeline carried words from a hamlet soliloquy. The brilliance of London’s late afternoon sun illuminated the room.
But what the new West ham United manager most wanted to say was that the fancy stuff is in the past, now.
The reputation he carried out of everton four short years ago has been battered almost beyond redemption. he seems to be trying to locate what he held back then, in days when he would have scoffed at the idea of the six-month contract which he is having to defend as a fact of managerial life now.
Moyes drew a thread between the partisan sea-faring spirits of Merseyside and London’s east end, though the most significant definition of what he wants to bring here was ‘feart’ — Scottish vernacular for the kind of fear which any team who visited Goodison Park knew something about, back in his time.
Moyes is a proud man who has found the questioning of his ability incredibly difficult to take at times during these humbling recent years. There’s a prurient fascination about how much he can take.
‘I think if you are talking about the 11 years at everton you would say that West ham look a good fit for David Moyes,’ was as defensive as he got.
But he was on to something when he described a willingness to make his new charges ‘cry’ with the physical effort, to work them harder, and to impress upon them that he is ‘in a hurry’.
Those who long for just a fraction of those days of West ham ‘ folklore’ have had enough of seeing the players stand by and let opponents pass them, neglecting the fundamental task of defending their own goal. They want a manager who actually knows what his best back four looks like. But above all they want a manager who can mould a proud side.
‘When I was younger it was, ‘‘This is how it is, take it or leave it’’,’ Moyes reflected. ‘I think as you get older you mellow in different ways. Probably in this job, I am going back to being David Moyes at Preston when players were probably crying at the work, or at everton in the early days as well.’
Of course, the game — and the manager’s lot — has lost all the old assurances that it did back then. There’s no place — and justifiably so — for the sneering, unpleasant way Moyes treated the BBC’s Vicki Sparks last season. he insisted that his telephone contact with West ham’s Karren Brady has included no mention of that episode. ‘Not a word.’
He ACCEPTED in the course of his introductory press conference that a running commentary from the owners, like West ham’s David Gold, goes with the turf now. As does an owner’s direct contact with players.
‘hey, it’s their money,’ he said. his smile seemed stuck on at times. And then there is the realisation — which his friend Sam Allardyce would have provided a vivid sense of when the two spoke by phone on Monday — that winning might not be enough.
‘ If style is more important than winning, then I’ll find out (from the fans) when I take to the job,’ he said. ‘ That’s one for another day.’
There are plenty of supporters who don’t care for the idea of him being here, of course. And the fixture list is pretty unforgiving, too: Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal in a 14-day period coming up after crucial fixtures with Watford, Leicester and a return to everton during which he needs his players to rip it up.
The fragility of his hold on this job for anything beyond May left Moyes characterising himself as the managerial equivalent of a loan player: a caretaker by any other name.
‘I have said it often enough about loan players. When you bring a loan player in, you get a chance to see him, if you think he is good enough you try and keep him,’ he said. ‘If you don’t, then he goes back to his parent club. No different for me now.’
except there is nowhere for a manager to return when he is surplus goods. Talking with Allardyce will have left him under no illusion that other, more cosmopolitan names — roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini — roll rather more easily off the tongue when it comes to available managers. Perhaps the best he can hope for is a rehabilitation of sorts.
There was no easy label from Moyes for West ham, as there had been from him at everton. At Goodison, he arrived, asked others to explain the set-up to him, was told it was the ‘People’s Club’, communicated that notion at his first press conference and a part of his own legend was born.
‘I’ve just not been able to think of a line that I could come up with,’ he replied when asked if there was an equivalent here.
Yet he navigated the difficult waters well, with a classy level of deference for the departing Slaven Bilic, no self-justifying suggestions that the squad was inadequate and an acceptance that, yes, he really did have something to prove.
Asked if this felt like this was his last chance, he said: ‘I don’t think it does. Carlo Ancelotti has had 10 clubs, rafa Benitez may have had nine clubs.
‘I think the way football is going, if you look, managers have a lot of clubs. So, this is my sixth club and I hope it is a long stay, long enough for both of us to be happy.’
The sun had set by the time the discussion was done. he must hope that was not a sign because his career is riding on this.