A supposedly wise man once said, “You should not talk about other clubs' players, they should just talk about their own,” - hard to argue in a sport that has become as much about personalities as it has the game itself. Of course, this little ditty comes from the Premier League’s newest heir to the whingeing throne, David Moyes, which makes his sentiments even hollower than his head. He was of course referring to Arsene Wenger, who had made disparaging comments about Everton, but oh how things change when the Adidas Predator is on the other foot. Now Moyes is all too happy to suggest that Manchester City’s signing of Patrick Vieira is bad for English football, like it has anything whatsoever to do with him.
Everton’s youth policy rivals any in England, granted, but when you consider that Mancini, with just five Man City games under his belt, has already handed a debut to a 19-year old defender, a first start for Vladimir Weiss and also places on the substitutes bench for three previously unheard of youth team players, then his words are again as hollow as they are misinformed. Granted all these players weren’t English born (although two are), but I doubt that their nationality had any significance in their selection. That said, the purchase of Patrick Vieira didn’t have any significance in their selections either. This still makes no mention of Moyes’ own transfer policy of bringing in the likes Sylvain Distin (32), Lucas Neill (now moved on at a small but not insignificant profit), and now the hapless American journeyman, Landon Donovan. Yes David, I’m sure your youth team players were overjoyed to see you bring in a man who has laboured in the appalling MLS since 2005.
It is clear for all to see that the angry red head is still harbouring a baffling grudge against City due to their aggressive approach for Joleon Lescott in the summer. Even more baffling than Moyes’ inability to, as the kids say, ‘get over it’ is his irritation at what went on. No, strike that, he isn’t irritated, he’s absolutely furious. But why? Because a richer club came in for one of his better players? That Man City didn’t initially offer enough? That they sent the money men rather than the manager to hammer out a deal? For a man who has been in the game for over thirty years his naivety is astounding.
You get the feeling that deep down even Moyes knows that the real motivation behind his hatred toward Man City is common or garden jealousy. For a club who have, against considerable odds and great financial hurdles, finished in the top six for the last three seasons, to be thrust aside by business men with the deepest of deep pockets must be hard to take. Add to that the similarities between Manchester City and Everton that Moyes himself has alluded to and you start to feel for him. Why couldn’t his board have approached Sheik Mansour rather than that dodgy Thai bloke who owned City for five minutes? Well, probably because Kenwright was busy with his touring production of ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’ or maybe because Kenwright is, rightly or wrongly, a dying breed of top flight chairmen, who just don’t have the clout to take their clubs to the next level.
But my point is that none of that is City’s fault. What should Manchester’s blue team have done – turned down the billions on offer to them, just to maintain a status quo that benefitted only the top four teams and wasn’t likely to change any time soon? No way. He wouldn’t have turned it down and nor would anyone.
In his programme notes for Saturday’s game against Man City Moyes used a phrase that I assume he read somewhere about six months and has spent an inexplicable amount of time trying to crowbar into any sentence he’s uttered ever since – he described City as ‘classless’. Give me a break. If you’re going to cry like a little ginger baby just because the bigger kid flexed his muscles in front of you and took your sweets, then if you’re not in the wrong business, you’re certainly at the wrong club.
