MANCHESTER: As Manchester United manager David Moyes struggles to string together back-to-back Premier League wins, there are reminders everywhere he looks that this type of form is not what the English champions are used to.
Saturday’s 1-1 draw against Southampton was at Old Trafford where the Sir Alex Ferguson stand, Sir Alex Ferguson bronze statue and newly unveiled Sir Alex Ferguson Way road loom large.
It also came as details of some of the content of Ferguson’s autobiography dripped into the newspapers ahead of this week’s book launch, while the home page of the club website was running a story headlined: “Sir Alex: Boss is sacrosanct”.
“I think the key for David Moyes is not to look to do anything better or less but just to maintain what the club has been for 20-odd years and keep the success going,” Ferguson said at a time when results are somewhat at odds with that aim.
United, who in Ferguson’s 26 years at the club won 13 Premier League titles, are sitting eighth in the table having triumphed in just three of their eight opening matches and none of them consecutively.
At other clubs, there would already be mutterings about a crisis and bookmakers would be slashing their odds on a sacking but Moyes is able to take much comfort in these bumpy times that he is at a club with a reputation for sticking with their man.
A particularly painful blow was conceding the equaliser in the 89th minute against Southampton when the teams of Moyes’s predecessor had a habit of snatching vital goals in the dying minutes.
“Conceding in the last minute was a real sickener,” Moyes said.
“We’d done enough to get ourselves more than one goal, but we never really had enough control at times. I thought we had really good pockets of play at some points of the game, but not enough control.” (Reuters)