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With heavy heart, but few alternatives, I’ve changed my mind about David Moyes.

After the abject home defeat by Liverpool, where Manchester United were lucky it wasn’t five or six instead of 0-3, this week's clueless display in the derby against City was one humiliation too many at Old Trafford.

All the way along, I’ve stuck with Moyes because I like the bloke, he’s a terrific man and I believed he deserved a chance to build his own dynasty.

But in football some jobs are just too big, or they are the wrong fit.

Just as Roy Hodgson never quite clicked at Liverpool, I fear Moyes and United might be destined to remain square peg and round hole.

Up until now, I’ve always maintained Moyes should be given £200million to rebuild his squad - but enough is enough. Not after his baffling team selection on Tuesday, and the way they were destroyed by City.

Moyes looks a pale, frightened man consumed by the pressure. I’m at the point now where I believe the job is too much for him.

When my 10-year-old boy asks why Juan Mata is playing on the right and Marouane Fellaini on the left, and I have to tell him that I’ve no idea, something is badly wrong.

United didn’t spend £65m on those two players to use them in a formation so alien to their talents, so what is the point of giving their manager another £200m in the summer if there is no clear purpose behind the spree?

Moyes has two of United’s favourite sons, Ryan Giggs - an all-time great - and Phil Neville on his coaching staff. Is he seeking their advice and taking it on board, or is he simply ignoring what everyone else can see?

The shambles against City wasn’t just a case of the noisy neighbours overpowering United with their financial muscle. Moyes’ starting line-up actually cost more, in transfer fees, than the team counterpart Manuel Pellegrini put out.

I almost hate myself for saying these things, because I have so much respect for what Moyes achieved at Everton, but sometimes brutal honesty is the best way forward.

United were hopeless against Liverpool and City - it makes you shudder thinking what Bayern Munich might do to them in the Champions League next week if they are again so bereft of ideas, pace, confidence and ambition.

We have reached the stage where 50 years of tradition at Old Trafford is being dismantled in a single season.

If you compiled a combined United-City XI, I could only make a serious case for Wayne Rooney and David De Gea getting in it from the red half of the divide.

Moyes understands more about football than I’ll ever know. But surely he can see, or his coaching staff should be telling him, that Tom Cleverley, Michael Carrick and Fellaini were never going to be a match for Fernandinho, Yaya Toure and David Silva.

And that Mata, instead of drifting in off the right flank, should be playing the role that Silva executes so well for City.

I warned in this column last week that beating Olympiakos, who are no great shakes, had only papered over the cracks.

Sadly, United’s fundamental weaknesses - in midfield and a glaring lack of pace and power - have been exposed ruthlessly again.

The shareholders must be getting edgy, and it has come to a sorry pass when Manchester United are the club everyone wanted to draw in the European Cup quarter-finals because they are regarded as the easiest tie.

Should they get rid of Moyes just 10 months after giving him a six-year contract? It seems inevitable now.

He is a pale, ghostly shadow of the man who did so well at Everton, and I know United’s troubles will be eating into him because he cares so much.

The fans have been magnificent, too. They have stuck with him. But I don’t know how he can’t see what everyone else could see about his team the other night.

Hodgson may not have been a good fit for Liverpool, but two years later he was the England manager.

I hope Moyes goes on to achieve great things in football - but now I fear it will not happen for him at Old Trafford.

Click here for Robbie on Liverpool's title challenge.

And here for his view on Andre Marriner's howler.