David Moyes a good man who was on a hiding to nothing

When David Moyes makes his first return to Old Trafford with Sunderland today, it is unlikely that there will be any hard feelings.

I'm sure that Moyes is a good, decent man but management is not a popularity contest and giving him the job was madness.

He was never going to replicate was Sir Alex did and was on a hiding to nothing in a job that just didn't work out. 

Moyes had not won anything in his eleven seasons at Everton,  in contrast Fergie beat Real Madrid in a European final and turned Aberdeen from also-rans to an all-conquering outfit before he arrived in Manchester.

Any manager would have struggled coming in at that point and stepping into the great man's shoes. 

Moyes had been trusted with the job in part due to being his own man at Everton, but at United he seemed unsure of himself and did it neither his way nor Fergie's. 

The squad altered too often and was in desperate need of surgery, but it was a script set in motion against a backdrop of wrong decisions from day one. 
The players were confused and lost faith, us fans were perplexed and getting rid of Ferguson's loyal and knowledgeable backroom staff was the biggest mistake of all. 

It wasn't Moyes' fault that Marouane Fellaini was his only signing.

He had identified the players that he wanted and it surely would have made a huge difference had he got them. 
Moyes suffered from David Gill's departure at the same time as Fergie and he was left to oversee a monumental transition more or less on his own without the full support of the club's owners and board. 

That one season of desperate underachievement in 2013/14 under Moyes set us back four and that's still evident today, given the spending we've seen since and, thus far, we're still some way off a title challenge.

Moyes has often lamented that he didn't get the time he felt he should've and, given more, would he made a success of the United job?
I don't know but he has been vindicated in some areas as changes were clearly needed.

It is now widely accepted that Moyes inherited an ageing United side in urgent need of reconstruction.
He said from the start that the United job was one of massive rebuilding that would possibly take the full six years of his contract to get into shape. 

Louis van Gaal faced the same issues and Jose has said that he still needs two or three transfer windows to get the squad he wants so that proved that Moyes was right. 

The club finally has a manager befitting of the job but the question remains: why didn't we have that when Fergie called it a day?