Moyes:? What happens next?

I've just finished watching Fulham v Man City and whilst it can hardly be described as a game for the purists, with both defences looking dodgy, one thing was apparent, Man City were intent on playing attractive football orchestrated by Hamman in the middle of the park.

The only time they resorted to 'hoofball' was when the ball needed to be kicked upfield as part of a defensive clearance, not as a means of starting an attacking move.

Now cast your minds back to the summer, when Sven was finally appointed as manager of City. He embarked on a 'manic' spending spree in a relatively short space of time, on largely unknown foreign players, but guess what, they all like to play football and retain possesion.

No prizes for guessing what sort of parallels I am trying to make here, but whilst I readily acknowledge the progress we have made under Moyes, by and large the football presentd to us has been ordinary and at other times downright ugly.

If the much mocked and maligned Sven can hastily assemble a side that is pleasing on the eye in the space of four weeks, is it too much to ask that after five years we cannot turn out a side who can string together three to four passes? Whilst it is a prerequisite for coaches and managers in the Premier League to possess a Uefa coaching qualification, it seems that coaching individual players to retain possesion and pass to each other is not.

The injuries to Arteta, Cahill and Vaughan have undoubtably come at a bad time for Moyes, indeed I don't believe Yakubu would have been signed but for Vaughan's injury in the pre-season game at Preston, but the manager's lack of knowledge of the European scene, or his stubborness to only buy British, almost precludes us from strengthening our biggest weakness in the current team: the midfield.

I have stated on previous occasions, that there HAS to be strong, skilful, ball-playing central midfielders in most of the teams that play in the Dutch, French, German,Spanish and Italian domestic leagues. If that is so, why could we not pick one or two up for reasonable prices in the last transfer window?

God forbid, I would ever compare Wenger with Moyes, but time after time, year after year, he manages to cherry-pick a plethora of players from the continent to great effect. Is it Moyes or our scouting system? Even the severly limited Mentalists on Thursday night managed to retain more possesion with nine men than we did with eleven!!

The old belief that managers can get too close to players also contiues to undermine Moyes. In Hibbert and Neville, we have two players whose efforts for the team cannot be called into question, but it is obvious that in the last two years Hibbert's game has gone backwards but the manager continues to stick with him and drops him occasionally only for him to be back in the side the folowing week, almost in the belief that a weeks rest will turn him into a decent player!

With Neville, it's slightly more complicated. Having made him club captain and then having to drop him would call into question the manager's selection policy in the first place, but again, it's glaringly obvious he ain't a ball-winner in the Joe Parkinson mould, and he's never going to be able to spray 40-yard passes across the field or go on a lung-bursting run to finish off a great flowing move.

In contrast, I praise Moyes for choosing Arteta, Baines, Howard, Yobo, Lescott and one or two others who grace our team, but I do call into question his ability to get any of his sides over the last five years to play good football on a regular basis. I'm not sure what is the length of time remaining on his current contract (is it four years?) but Thursday night's performance was almost pre-historic in terms of how the game has moved on in recent times... I'm not sure our own leader isn't just stuck in his own particular time warp.

Wake up, Davey before it's too late.

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