David Moyes was openly sneered and sniggered at by Manchester United stars



As if immediate memories of a 2-0 defeat by the worst team left in the Champions League were not enough to darken the mood on the Manchester United flight home from Athens in February, the sight of David Moyes’s reading material was enough to prompt further shaking of heads.



A management self-help guide called Good to Great was Moyes’s choice after his team’s 2-0 defeat by Olympiacos that we now know was the tipping point of the Scot’s dismal reign at Old Trafford.



The book was noted by Moyes’s players, the reaction predictable.

Lack of respect: Manchester United's players never really took to the methods of former manager David Moyes

Tipping point: Moyes reacts during United's woeful defeat to Olympiacos in the Champions League

Greek tragedy: Olympiacos' Joel Campbell scored one of the two goals in the win over United

SO WHAT WAS MOYES' BOOK?

Good to Great, by Jim Collins, was released in 2001.

A synopsis of the management self-help guide reads: 'After a five-year research project, Collins concludes that good to great can and does happen. In this book, he uncovers the underlying variables that enable any type of organization to make the leap from good to great while other organizations remain only good. Rigorously supported by evidence, his findings are surprising - at times even shocking - to the modern mind.' Chapters include; 'Good Is the Enemy of Great', 'Confront Brutal Facts', 'A Culture of Discipline' and 'The Flywheel and the Doom Loop'.

We are the Premier League champions,’ said one source from that flight. ‘Why on earth did our manager need to read a book to learn how to manage us?’



Moyes may have been United’s ‘Chosen One’ but to most of his players, the former Everton manager was never the right one. At times their disregard for him was startling.



In January when Moyes took his team to Dubai on a training break, he allowed them a night out.



Some players rewarded him by returning at 5am, waking other guests.



When Shinji Kagawa — never trusted by Moyes — arrived so late for the flight to Munich this month that he had to be fast-tracked through departures by United’s security staff he did so with a fixed smile on his face hinting that he really did not care.

Good to Great: Moyes was spotted reading a self-help management guide

Untrusted: Moyes and Shinji Kagawa never really saw eye-to-eye during the Scot's reign at Old Trafford

On the ball: Kagawa played in the Champions League defeat to Bayern Munich, despite not being trusted by Moyes Late: Kagawa was said to have smirked when he was late for a team flight

As Moyes’s day of reckoning drew close recently, meanwhile, three unused players sat in the stand at one game and began to place bets on just how long their beleaguered manager would survive.



Privately, Moyes now knows that he got some things wrong. He knows he was too cautious, too pragmatic. He hated the ‘Chosen One’ banner draped in his honour at the Stretford End, feeling it implied the job had been gifted rather than earned.



He wanted to impose his own personality on his squad and accepts now that it was too soon, that a softer approach was required.

At training, United’s players soon became disenchanted with his sessions.

Not a fan: Moyes hated the 'Chosen One' banner draped in his honour at the Stretford End

They found them boring. One coach appointed by Moyes was referred to as ‘F*** Off (insert name here)’, simply because that was what some players felt like saying when he started talking.



Nor was the disaffection and the disloyalty restricted to the training ground. Towards the end of that game in Athens, for example, Moyes found himself arguing with the fourth official.

‘Send him off,’ came one voice from among the substitutes. ‘We would be better off without him.’ A clear act of insubordination, it astonished those who heard it — but it was not an isolated incident.



Bad night at the office: Moyes found himself arguing with the fourth official in Athens and a voice from the United substitutes' bench shouted 'Send him off'

One theme of United’s recent season, for example, has been the leaking of team news to a national newspaper. Having established which young player was responsible, Moyes admonished him but to this day the leaks continue.



In the dressing room they just were not listening and those who have been around United for some time quickly drew an obvious conclusion. None of this would have been allowed to continue under Sir Alex Ferguson.



When Kieran Richardson, now at Fulham, turned up at an airport wearing a beanie hat, for example, Ferguson tore it from his head. When he suspected team news leaks two seasons ago, Ferguson began to confiscate mobile phones on match day.

Discipline: Former United player Kieran Richardson had a beanie hat torn from his head by Sir Alex Ferguson when he turned up at the airport with it on

It was draconian management but it worked. Under Moyes, the niggles just continued to niggle.



He could not stem the flow of problems and if an impression is forming here of a squad of renegades running riot around Carrington, then it must be said that at times Moyes did not help himself. At times, for a manager of 15 years’ experience, the 50-year-old could be astonishingly naive.



Back in winter, for example, Moyes found himself constantly fending off questions about his relationship with Robin van Persie and Rio Ferdinand.



In public, he insisted the stories were untrue, a strategy that might have worked if he had not sat with a fellow Premier League manager after one game and torn strips off both.

Strained relations?: Moyes had to answer questions about his relationship with United striker Robin van Persie in the winter

Unrest? Moyes had to field questions about his working relationship with Rio Ferdinand

Ferdinand, for his part, got to hear of the conversation and, at a stroke, another relationship lay in pieces. Every club have their problems, of course. Moyes, though, appeared to bring some of them on himself.



A decent, honest man, the pressure of life at United could make him appear curt — even the ground staff at Old Trafford did not like him — while his decision to tell two midfield players they could leave the club in January seemed extraordinary, given his lack of playing resources at that time.



To this day, one of those players is in the United team.

Nightmare over: Moyes' brief reign at United has come to an end

Certainly, the first-team squad will not miss their departed manager.



Tales of Moyes’s difficulties at Old Trafford serve as a salutary tale of modern management. If you do not get results your employees can make you or break you.



Somewhere in Moyes’s big red self-help manual, there is probably a paragraph about that.



