Year in Review: Top 5 Manchester United Moments of 2014

No.1 – David Moyes sacked (April 22nd)

The moment all Manchester United fans were waiting for. David Moyes was finally removed from his position as manager of Manchester United Football Club.

The ex-Everton man led United from Champions by 11 pts to 7th place in just 10 short months, despite adding Marouane Fellaini and Juan Mata to his squad throughout his time in charge.

While the Scotsman did promote Adnan Januzaj to the first team and get him to sign a new five-year contract as well as handing a new deal to Wayne Rooney, Moyes’ tenure was generally full of resentment from fans towards the new man in charge for his woeful decision making and poor tactics.

The photo that summer up Moyes’ tenure at Old Trafford Credit: oldtraffordfaithful.com

His time in charge was summed up when his assistant Steve Round was caught on camera during a match with a flipchart, titled “Set-Piece Playbook” which showed the amateurism most felt was taking place in front of them.

Rio Ferdinand described an occasion before the Champions League clash against Bayern Munich where Moyes took the side to practice set-pieces in a public park, while others have mentioned some of his other methods as being from the “dark ages”.

In the season under Moyes, Manchester City, Liverpool and Everton all did the double over Manchester United while United failed to beat Chelsea or Tottenham too.

The game against Fulham will forever linger in fans’ memories though as Manchester United were held to a 2-2 draw against Fulham despite taking the lead in the final 10 minutes. After the game, statistics showed that Moyes’ side put the ball into the box a staggering 81 (!!) times during the game. Rene Meulensteen, a former Manchester United coach, was the manager of Fulham at the time and described it as “straight forward” to defend against, while defender Dan Burn said it was like “playing against a Conference side.”

Moyes’ departure wasn’t handled particularly well but it was absolutely the correct decision. Louis Van Gaal has proved that this season.