Wayne Rooney claims that a lack of respect from Manchester United’s players meant David Moyes was always destined to fail at the club – Man United News And Transfer News

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Wayne Rooney has claimed that a lack of respect from Manchester United’s players meant that David Moyes was never going to succeed at Old Trafford.

The Scot was given the unenviable task of following up to Sir Alex Ferguson’s trophy laden 26 seasons at United.

Moyes was appointed in the summer of 2013, but only lasted 10 months in the job as he guided the champions to a seventh placed finish in the following campaign.

The now West Ham manager also managed to alienate certain legends in the dressing room such as Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand, who have both been critical of his management style in comparison to Ferguson.

United’s all-time top goal scorer, Wayne Rooney, played for the manager at both Everton as a kid and later on in his doomed spell as head coach at The Theatre of Dreams.

Speaking on Sky Sport’s Stick to Football podcast, Rooney opened up on Moyes’ time as coach.

In defence of his under-fire former manager he claimed, “the players never gave David Moyes a chance at Manchester United”.

“I think it was always going to be tough for him. I know David from when he was at Everton, and he was never the same person at Manchester United”.

The former England international’s assessment correlates with many other pundits’ views that the job was just too big for the former Everton manager. However, he also clearly believes that the dressing room also need to harbour a significant proportion of the blame for things not working out.

Elaborating on the issue he asserted, “obviously, it was a massive change for him, so I don’t think he did as well as he would’ve liked, but I also think there was a lack of respect from the senior players towards him, and they weren’t having him which was tough for him.”

Another issue that Rooney bemoaned, was the disappearance of true winners in the dressing room and the evolving football culture that effected Moyes’ time at the club.

“Then you’ve got the likes of Jesse Lingard, Danny Welbeck and Tom Cleverley coming through, who had good careers, but they weren’t the same as the core group we had. Football was changing, the behaviour of players and everything around football was changing and that was a big time”.

“I remember after the Liverpool game when we got beat at Old Trafford in 2014 under David Moyes, the players were dancing around the changing room the next day at the training ground, playing hip hop music. I tried taking the speaker out the room and you can try to control as much as possible, but you can’t really”.

Moyes has gone on to have reasonable success at a lower level, after initial hiccups at Real Sociedad and Sunderland, guiding West Ham to the Conference League title last season. However despite sitting in ninth place, a string of poor results which has seen the Hammers pick up just three points out of an available 18 has put him under immense pressure once again at the London Stadium.