Here’s an idea. Let’s all stop talking about David Moyes. He’s gone, we all have an opinion about the Scot and that’s now where it should end.
As a fan base we seen obsessed with Moyes, who left West Ham’s employment in June. It’s a long time ago, we’ve seen a new coach, a new backroom staff and lots of new players arrive since.But with every breath we take (there’s a song there somewhere), it all seems to come back to Moyes. What would he have done, how does he compare? But for what purpose?
Why can’t we be a confident enough fan base to move on? Moyes is history, and unless David Sullivan wants to look a laughing stock, having been this way before, Moyes is not coming back.
But what is being achieved by this constant harping back to the past? Why does everything that happens now have to be held up as a comparison with Moyes?
It’s not important, it’s irrelevant to the current situation, but by continuing the debate there seems to be a desire from those that fought so hard last season to get him out to keep justifying what they did.
Live with it, folks. Constant comparisons with the good old days achieves nothing other than perpetuating the rifts that have split our fan base.
Me,? I felt Moyes gave us four good years, top half finishes, a European trophy and regular European competition. Try as you might, that’s hard to devalue. But by the end, after a terrible last six months of last season, we needed a change. Moyes said so, Karren Brady said so; David Sullivan, who knows what he feels?
We have moved on. Let’s make our judgements on what we see in front of our eyes, not what we can dredge up from the past. Everyone knows the arguments, all can have a view, but isn’t all that now a waste of brain cells?
It’s the same old views, mainly on social media. Times have changed, nobody is telling anyone something they don’t already know. There is no new view on all this, so why not just leave it to history and concentrate on the future.
Let’s concentrate on what has followed. Julen Lopetegui’s regime, Tim Steidten’s performance as Technical Director, the new players and the current disturbing start to the season. It’s got nothing to do with Moyes now, so let’s have a period of silence about our former manager.
Friends tell me that at the LMA meeting this week when Martin O’Neill was installed as the managers’ trade union’s new chairman Moyes was in attendance looking tanned, happy and stress free. Now there’s a surprise. He’s not coming back.
Lopetegui should be judged on his own decisions, not what Moyes may or may not have done. It’s not been great, but after a few hours recovering from yet another trip - and mauling - to Liverpool, it’s best to look on the bright side, although you sense that too many more defeats may well advance decisions about the club’s future.
Liverpool was the predictable disaster but also saw signs of improvement, much needed after the amateur-hour tactics against Chelsea when 60,000-plus of us looking on in horror collectively were questioning what on earth was going on.
Inverted full backs when we didn’t have the ball, acres of space on the flanks not being protected, seemingly no serious pressing, three at the back with Edison Alvarez seemingly playing in a fog and horrendous acres of midfield populated only by Chelsea players. Some might say (there's another song for you) that level of basic incompetence is a sackable offence. A bit early though, it seems.
Liverpool was better, just. Never a ground we enjoy, one win in over 60 years, you know the rest. This time the 4-3-3 made sense, Jean-Clair Todibo came in at the back after plenty of speculation that not all was well with the young Frenchman. I mean, on the bench in Stratford or playing for Juventus. You would moan, wouldn’t you?
And he did OK; big and strong, good positioning and comfortable on the ball. It all went to pot late on when tiredness crept in and we were down to ten men thanks to Alvarez’s customary stupidity, you just can’t lunge into challenges like that when you have a referee at Anfield who probably arrived on the Liverpool team coach (don’t they all).
He was shocking. Liverpool’s equaliser was offside, Danny Ings’ first-half effort probably wasn’t and from the glut of penalty appeals we had, surely one was worth a crack. One was right in front of me in the Anfield Road end, the ball hit Joe Gomez’s hand and then ran up his arm to flick off a bicep. How much does it take to be handball these day? Jarrod Bowen was hauled down, Crysencio Summerville likewise.
It’s par for the course at Anfield, but at least the game showed for at least half-an-hour in that second-half, we were unfortunate not to get back on level terms. Then came Alvarez’s loony tackle, a red card, and the game was over and the wheels as they say, came off.
I'm a bit biased maybe, but there was enough spirit and effort to suggest there’s a few more games before the dreaded axe. Since then there has been a lot of buck-passing over incoming transfers and the decision to employ JL.
The blame game has been hilarious. One of the main participants in the 'Moyes Out' campaign went on YouTube to scream that Moyes didn’t get a contract "because he was shit" and that nobody at West Ham wanted Lopetegui because, well , "He was shit too, and we all signed a petition against his employment".
Unfortunately some clever clogs found a tweet from this particular loud mouth, that had Lopetegui at the top of his wish list. Oh, well, what a shame.
There has been running for cover everywhere. The rumours suggest that Tim didn’t have JL on his wish list, that all the transfers were his choices (give or take Max Kilman, Carlos Soler or Guido Rodriguez who were Lopetegui’s demands) or that Sullivan enacted his agent mate Will Salthouse to secure Lopetegui as the next head coach.
It went on and on, various mouthpieces acting in support of Steidten or Lopetegui. "It wasn’t me, guv" seemed the thrust here. The Daily Mail even ran a story saying that Sullivan, Steidten and Lopetegui were at loggerheads, Sullivan interfering and blocking deals. Now there’s a surprise.
So, let’s just ignore all that tittle tattle, let’s forget Moyes, and let’s angle our concerns at the people who are running this club. Times have changed, people have to step up and take resistibility. It’s a whole new ball game now.
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