Is David Moyes a Busted Flush as a Manager?

Pinned on the fridge of every struggling Premier League chairman is a shortlist of managers. It’s a collective shortlist, with the same names linked with the same vacancies until the person at the top is plucked.

It’s the same shortlist new Swansea City manager Bob Bradley bemoaned before pitching up in south Wales earlier in October. “There’s certainly a network,” he complained in November 2015, as per Associated Press (via ESPN). “There are some very good managers but also some others who aren’t very good but still manage to get jobs and opportunities.” 

David Moyes’ name was on this list for a while.

The Scot found himself in the managerial abyss following his unceremonious dismissal as Manchester United manager in April 2014, making the switch to the Basque Country in an attempt to revive his career. In charge of Real Sociedad, Moyes did little to suggest his toxic stint at Old Trafford had been nothing more than a blot on an otherwise tidy copybook. Yet Sunderland still turned to him this summer.

The Black Cats were thrust into a situation they hadn’t envisaged at the conclusion of last season, when Sam Allardyce led the club to Premier League safety. They were preparing for another campaign under English football’s most consistent coach, only for Allardyce to embark on his own ill-fated reign as the England manager. It was an unfortunate scenario for the club to find itself in a matter of weeks before the start of the new season.

They turned to Moyes, who was almost certain to get whichever bottom-half Premier League job came up first this season. But why? He had failed in his last two jobs, infamously so at Manchester United. But Sunderland still deemed him the man to lead them into the 2016/17 campaign. Eight games into the season, and the Black Cats are without a league win under Moyes, sitting slumped at the foot of the table with just two points.

They should have seen this coming. In his 10 months as United boss, Moyes showed his methods and practices were becoming outdated, so with more than two years passing since then, why did the Black Cats think the Scot would be any different? 

Moyes was relatively successful in his 11 years at Everton, but even their fans began to …

continue reading in source www.bleacherreport.com