Rio Ferdinand has spoken out about David Moyes’ shirt reign as Manchester United manager, criticising the tactics employed by the former Everton coach.
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After 12 years with the Manchester club, Ferdinand left for Queens Park Rangers after his contract expired. Writing in his upcoming autobiography (which is currently being serialised by The Sun), Ferdinand discussed the changes that Moyes had made to the squad’s style of play, saying: “He tried to impose a vision but never seemed to be completely clear what that vision should be. Unintentionally, he created a negative vibe where, with [Alex Ferguson], it had always been positive. It was always how to stop the other side. Moyes set us up not to lose. We’d been accustomed to playing to win.
“Moyes’s innovations mostly led to negativity and confusion. The biggest confusion was over how he wanted us to move the ball forward. Often he told us to play it long. Some players felt they kicked the ball long more than at any time in their career.
“Sometimes our main tactic was the long, high, diagonal cross. It was embarrassing. In one home game against Fulham we had 81 crosses! I was thinking, ‘why are we doing this? Andy Carroll doesn’t play for us!’ The whole approach was alien. Other times Moyes wanted lots of passing. He’d say: ‘Today I want us to have 600 passes in the game. Last week it was only 400’. Who cares? I’d rather score five goals from 10 passes.”
Ferdinand returned to Old Trafford alongside his QPR teammates last week, though came up empty-handed after his new club suffered a 4-0 demolishing, as they look increasingly likely to face relegation this season.
After Moyes was removed from his position at United, Dutch coach Louis van Gaal was named as the new manager of the club. He has also struggled to deal with leading one of the most underperforming Man U sides in recent history, with their victory against QPR being their first in all 4 of their opening games.
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