It is nearly nine years since David Moyes's Everton were thrashed 5-1 in a Uefa Cup tie at Dinamo Bucharest. These things happen to the best teams and the best managers but those present on that sultry September night in Romania may not be entirely surprised by Moyes's travails at Manchester United.

The overriding sense was that he suspected his players could not out-pass Dinamo on their home turf, so the Scot attempted to counter technique-suffused Eastern European invention with long, high balls, strong set-pieces and a defensively configured five-man midfield. In other words, with pragmatism - tactically his default setting.

Given precisely the same Everton players, Brendan Rodgers, Roberto Martínez, Gus Poyet, Mauricio Pochettino and Arsène Wenger – to name just five, others such as Manuel Pellegrini could also be included – would surely have taken an alternative route.

Forget the subtle differences between them. Their respective variations in formation and assorted nuances when it came to natural width versus diamonds – let alone the vexed question of deploying one or two strikers – are mere semantics. The important thing is that the quintet would all have tried to pass and move their way through the tie.

All five might well have lost that tie but the philosophy and principles which have defined their football careers contrast with Moyes's essential pragmatism and arguably explain why they are impressing while Manchester United's Scottish manager is not.

Although Pochettino's Southampton and their near unique style of pressing sets them a apart, the Argentinian shares one integral feature with Rodgers, Martínez, Poyet and Wenger: an unwavering faith in his football philosophy and a determination to stick to principles through thick and thin.

Rodgers endured a bit of a slow, sticky start at Liverpool but the former Swansea manager held his nerve, set out his slick passing vision, imbued the club with a coaching culture big on control and cleverness, both on and off the ball, and is now reaping the rewards in thrilling fashion.

Admittedly Rodgers' Liverpool feature a few more accurate long passes – often delivered by Steven Gerrard – than his old über-pure Swansea side but their superb football is the realisation of a long-cherished dream nurtured between the pages of the 180-page dossier - or personal managerial manifesto - he submitted to the Anfield board before being offered the job.

While Moyes's United, like his Everton, have at times played some pleasing enough football, the mish-mash of different systems and styles Sir Alex Ferguson's successor has experimented with suggest a pragmatist too busy fire-fighting and attempting to achieve reasonable short-term results to properly address the need for a defined ethos.

The result is that no one really knows what United currently stand for. True Moyes lacks, among others, strikers of the calibre of Luis Suárez and Daniel Sturridge but would he really have re-invented Jordan Henderson as successfully as Rodgers?

On the subject of discernible identity, the good news for Sunderland is that Gus Poyet's side are beginning to possess one. After years of, at their best, being all about energy and effort, Poyet is creating a club culture based on patient possession, building from the back and smart passing along the ground.

His arrival may have come too late to save them from relegation but at least the Wearsiders now have a belief system to cling on to - along with the hope that if the drop to the Championship can be avoided, Poyet's passing game will not only entertain but prove the best way of breaking the cycle of perpetual struggle into which the former "team of all the talents" have become locked. His wish that "the ball should want to be cared for by our team" is not only endearing but emblematic of a man capable of grasping the bigger picture.

Should Sunderland go down and Crystal Palace survive, Tony Pulis's advocates may claim that the high priest of anti-football pragmatism has scored a key victory – but can anyone really envisage a Pulis team thriving in the top half of the Premier League?

Tellingly just as Pulis seemed to hit a ceiling at Stoke City, Sam Allardyce's West Ham have spent much of this season demonstrating that such playing the percentages style anti-football can only take you so far.

The road between purist high priest - think Everton's Martínez - and Allardyce or Pulis-esque fundamentalist is winding and scenic with the Moyes and Alan Pardews of this world operating half-way houses.

José Mourinho is one of their neighbours but the Portuguese, cleverer and better resourced than the rest, has elevated pragmatism into something so close to an art form that he ranks as a special case.

That high priest of the counter-attacking game – Aston Villa's Paul Lambert – loosely belongs in this broad church, too – even if neither Moyes nor Pardew would ever be inclined to echo Lambert's recent claim that "possession is over-rated".

Like a lot of managers, the former pair are more about convenient coalitions of ideologies. Such mixing and matching has generally served them both well during fine careers. And yet … clubs such as Manchester United and Newcastle surely need to be coached by dreamers and visionaries convinced that philosophy matters – not conservatives with a small 'c'.

Good as much of the work Pardew has done on Tyneside undeniably is, it was depressing to hear him suggest that the team might have to "go a bit more direct" once Yohan Cabaye defected to Paris Saint-Germain. Granted he lacked a playmaking midfield of Cabaye's calibre to pull everything together but surely with players as gifted and intelligent as Hatem Ben Arfa and Vurnon Anita on his books he could come up with some aesthetically pleasing, opponent-damaging way of tweaking his midfield system - while somehow unlocking Moussa Sissoko's mislaid creative talent?

Maybe what Pardew really needs is not some "personal managerial counsellor" – one is to be appointed in the wake of his pitchside head-butt on Hull's David Meyler – but new-found faith in the sort of defined vision that has sustained Wenger for decades.

Either that or spend a few weeks in a Buddhist retreat … which is where Moyes could shortly be heading.