Former Manchester United manager David Moyes has demonstrated the kind of timing that eluded him during his catastrophic spell at Old Trafford last season, by appearing in a wide ranging Mail On Sunday interview today.
United of course, went down 2-1 at home to Swansea yesterday in Louis Van Gaal's first competitive game in charge and now the likes of Ed Woodward have to pore over Moyes' account of his sacking and the disaster that was United's transfer business last summer.
It's hard not to feel a twinge of sympathy for Moyes when he explains that he was near enough the last to know he was about to be sacked and when he tried to contact Woodward, he was merely told he would have a meeting the next morning at Carrington at 8am. Moyes instead went into the training ground four hours earlier to go for a run and a shower:
‘I hadn’t slept a wink, But the run gave me a chance to clear my head. A bit of time to think before I started to pack up my stuff.’
Moyes also reiterates his belief that he didn't get enough time at Old Trafford:
I was devastated to lose the job because it was something I felt I could make a real success of. We knew it was going to take time to make the necessary changes. It was going to take time to evolve. But we were in the process of making other important changes. In the end, I don’t feel I was given time to succeed or fail.’
He also reveled that United were actively trying to sign Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Cesc Fabregas last summer. Which to be fair, might have helped him alright:
‘It’s been well documented that we wanted Fabregas, Bale and Ronaldo. There was talk of Ronaldo when I first arrived. We were close to getting a couple of major names. I’m not getting in a blame game here but things just didn’t materialise. I had taken over from the most successful manager in history. The chief executive had taken over from one of the most renowned administrators in the game [David Gill]. So it was a new job for two people.’
