IF ever a club needs a change of name it is the club who shabbily dispensed with the man they pursued, presented and paraded to be part of a new legacy.
For Manchester United, read Mammon United, because when all the events of last weekend deteriorating into a manic and messy Monday actually boil down to it, the sacking of David Moyes was all down to money.
Lucre, moolah, shekels, bread, the folding stuff, dough, spondulix and in particular, greenbacks, were truly at the dirty, rotten core of why a manager was jettisoned.
Ten months after an appointment, not only anointed by Suralex, but accompanied by the fierce message that Moyes was at Old Trafford to stay, he was suddenly deemed to be the Scot who had not got the lot and so was shown the door marked exit.
The role of Moyes at fortress Gold Trafford was envisaged by the mandarins of Mammon to continue the serial silverware assembly of club football’s most gleaming prizes.
Moyes’ remit was to keep the money-making rolling in, to emulate, if not perhaps even outdo, the Suralex-inspired run of success that did so much to allow shareholders, and especially the club’s American owners, to prosper.
According to the capable manipulating, man-oeuvring mythmakers, Suralex invited the then Everton manager into his revered residence - Moyes himself perpetuating the fable that he rushed home to change into a suit because he could not meet Fergie in his jeans - to declare him as his successor.
(Cue violins, rose petals, a choir chorusing a crescendo of hallelujahs).
When the anointment was confirmed to the world, gasp, Moyes was given a six-year contract buoyed by a pledge that United did not want a quick fix but were in it for a long haul, the project of Moyes the First to follow Ferguson the First. The king is dead, long live the new king.
All those honourable intentions were further supplemented in a public microphone proclamation at the Theatre of Schemes by the outgoing, but never far away Suralex, that what the ManU public had “got to do now” was “back the new manager”.
Last Monday’s tawdry leaking of Moyes’ dismissal over social media before the club - sorry, the world’s leading football brand - had actually informed dead-man-walking David that he indeed would beone of the club’s shortest-serving helmsmen, was as brutish as it was unedifying.
When the ManUber-barons finally spoke it was a statement in which the integrity and honesty of Moyes was praised. Not too much of those particular qualities were displayed by his erstwhile employers.
There are reports that even his patron started to transfer his loyalty and backing in the days before the grim reaper’s scythe finally fell.
Since his dismissal Moyes has been slaughtered. Critics said his signings were ill-judged, his tactics were too hidebound, his talent too lightweight to carry the burden of the job, his backroom staff not up to the task, his previous record far from exemplary.
Moyes has been thoroughly damned by United, a vilification that must smart all the more given his last match in charge was a 2-0 defeat at Everton, where his 11- year reign was greeted by a chorus of blue murder.
Such a far hue and cry from ten months earlier when the successor to Suralex was accorded his own face-adorned banner bearing the legend: “The Chosen One”.
But poor form, poorer results, paucity of style apart, the real reason behind Moyes’ morphing from hero to zero is the sound of kerch-ing.
The club are mill-stoned by immense debts brought by takeover by the American-based Glazer family.
Only last June they were said to be a whopping £389.2 million in debt, costing £70.8m to service over the course of the financial year.
Those figures were put into the sharpest of context by the defeat at Everton, which confirmed United could not qualify for the lucrative Champions League next season.
That absence wipes out an estimated £25m in revenue next season.
Said one financial analyst: “Clearly Nike (United’s kit provider) and other sponsors are paying for one of the best and most recognised football brands in the world - not one that cannot even make the Champions League.
“The financials ensured Moyes was not given the time to perform.”
There’s the rub - “the financials”.
They are the factors that run big football, big business and that is worrying not solely for ManU but for all those other clubs purely viewed as cash cattle.
Moyes’ exit, seen by many as curious in its timing, is a prime cut of “the financials”.
Once Champions League qualification was missed Moyes could be sacked without paying the full compensation of his six-year deal.
How callous and calculating. How disgraceful to sack a man simply because the figures did not add up.
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