Public ridicule and scepticism on all sides, David Moyes will need his capacity for delusion more than ever at West Ham

Does Moyes have an idea, a vision, a unifying message? Does he still believe in his own ability, even if nobody else does?

David Moyes will be tested at West Ham (Getty)

Look I don't rate them boys

Bare wasteman, bare pagan boys

I come to your team and I f*** s*** up

I'm David Moyes

Stormzy, ‘Know Me From’ (2015)


 Moyes was unveiled as West Ham's new manager on Tuesday 
 (Getty)

Most of us are still striving for our legacy. David Moyes’s is already secure. He is the man who had the biggest job in football, and messed it up, and is never going to get it back again. There’s not a huge amount he can do about that now.

And yet at the age of 54, the mind is still willing, the familiar suit-and-sweater combination still immaculately pressed and hanging in the wardrobe. Most importantly, the desire is still sharpened to a piercing point. So when Moyes got the call to save West Ham’s season, he didn’t give it a second thought.

He was unveiled as Slaven Bilic’s replacement on Tuesday, trying his hardest to smile as he posed for photos with the club shirt. “Trying” is the operative word here. Moyes doesn’t really smile so much as grimace with teeth: he aspires to smile, and he’ll give it his all, but if it’s not to be, ultimately he’ll hold up his hands and admit that drooping, existential sadness was just too good on the day.

The moment Moyes was linked with the West Ham job, he was ridiculed. Fans took to the airwaves in despair. Pundits queued up to stick in the boot. Internet meme artists went into overdrive. Perhaps David Gold, David Sullivan and Karren Brady appointed Moyes with one eye already on the massive PR coup they could score by sacking him. Never let anyone say West Ham don’t look long-term.

Moyes had the biggest job in football and lost it (Getty) (GETTY IMAGES)

This is the sort of ridicule that Moyes now attracts wherever he goes. Whether it is justified or not is by the by. The real point of interest is how it has affected him: whether the last four years, and his successive failures at Manchester United, Real Sociedad and Sunderland, have impaired Moyes’s reputation and judgement to the point where he is no longer able either to command a group of elite-level players, or convince them to buy into his vision.

Managers are quite unlike the rest of us. The criticism and scrutiny they attract on an almost daily basis is the sort of thing very few of us will ever face. Even footballers have 25 team-mates to share the load. But the manager stands alone: the dreamer, the visionary, the messiah, and ultimately the martyr.

Like politicians, they must know that all meaningful change only arrives slowly, painfully, and with consequences. Like politicians, they must simultaneously have the ability to convince everybody else that it is the easiest thing in the world. Politicians are liars because people can’t handle the truth. Likewise, football managers must bridge the gulf between reverie and reality with industrial-sized vats of delusion.

Moyes' failure at United will always live with him (Getty) (GETTY IMAGES)

This is why so many top-level managers are such strange creatures, powered almost by a messianic fantasy. Mauricio Pochettino talks in his new book about his unique ability to perceive “universal energy”, “an energy field that makes the world go round, an aura that accompanies people”. Pep Guardiola’s taste for emphasis and hyperbole causes him to throw around superlatives and terms like “so happy” and “most beautiful”, like a Miss World contestant on smelling salts. Jose Mourinho sees dark, twisted conspiracies wherever he goes.

Then you have Brendan Rodgers describing himself as an educator and not a trainer. Louis van Gaal dropping his trousers in front of the entire Bayern Munich squad. Felix Magath trying to treat a knee injury with cheese. Sam Allardyce insisting that the Real Madrid job was his by right. Diego Simeone generally. This is, by and large, a job for the certifiable. Perhaps Moyes’s fundamental problem is that he is essentially a normal guy in a world of raving, eye-popping lunatics.


 Moyes is hoping to prove he still has what it takes at the top level (Getty)

Football has moved on, even since Moyes enjoyed his success at Everton. Players and fans now demand more than a tight defence, a decent result and a collective effort, more even than entertaining football. They need to feel part of something larger: a vision, an ideal, a project. In this context it is particularly telling to read accounts of Moyes’s time at Real Sociedad, which seems to have been characterised - literally and figuratively - by lots of running without ever really going anywhere. “There are lots of things missing, not just the final pass,” midfielder David Zurutuza said. “We’re having doubts. We’re lacking an idea.”

For Moyes, football has always been its own end. It is why he buries himself in the job: racking up the petrol miles and air miles as he scoots all around the world scouting signings, scouting opponents. For a man lacking the essential creative spark, hard work has always been his surrogate for genius. And if football were played entirely on the football pitch, it may well be enough. Burnley are seventh on the back of a well-organised defence, a skilled tactician, a couple of big men up top and a team that runs until it drops. There is literally no reason why West Ham cannot do the same.

But Moyes must know there is more to it than that. Does he have an idea, a vision, a unifying message? Does he still believe in his own ability, even if nobody else does? In the face of enormous public ridicule, grime banter, a sceptical fanbase and possibly even a sceptical dressing room, Moyes will find his capacity for delusion tested like never before