Dude, I can talk a lot.So he said the "in the genes" thing once, and he's played one match where we had the highest number of crosses in PL history since something like 2006. Man, you should work for the media if you managed to grab those two things and turn it into "Moyes doesn't know how to do anything but tell his players to cross the football." Come on, dude, you of all people are better than stooping to writing headlines for The Daily Mail.
I think it's safe to say that Moyes is probably well aware of his failings (and that of his players) so far but backs himself to rectify them. I don't think he genuinely believes that all is dandy at United like he says in his press conferences, and those excuses are the exact same kind of excuses that Sir Alex Ferguson would use every single season when we lost a game. It's just press officer 101, or at least Manchester United press officer 101. Complain about fixtures, complain about referees, bemoan bad luck and injuries, etc. This is all par for the course. SAF never criticised himself publically and I don't expect Moyes to.
Moyes does have work to do and it will have to start with clearing out the old guard and bringing in a new group. As mentioned earlier, he'll need to get mentally tough players as well as the bigwigs (preferrably someone who combines the two) as we're desperate for leaders on the pitch, where it matters.
I do wonder if he will improve his coaching team. I really just don't see them being as good as he seems to believe they are. I really wish we still had some of the old crew, particularly the man managing the side we faced yesterday. Not as bothered about Phelan, I feel we played better football when he wasn't assistant manager, but oh well.
Personally, I do think that if we had used Smalling, Evans and Jones instead of Rio/Vidic then we'd be in a considerably better position than we are. I think Moyes wanted to give them their shot, and now he's been forced into bringing them back again because of injuries. I think we should have got a central midfielder in the summer, but Woodward buggered that up. By the time Winter came, none of the big-shot central midfielders would have wanted to come anywhere near us... they had CL football and we, well, at the moment we're not looking like we'll be getting it. Getting any player during the winter is tough, though. I was surprised we got Mata, I thought we'd be getting nobody at all, honestly.
As for "But you guys didn't need Mata, you needed a solid defence and a few central midfielders" - while it's true that we are not shy on attacking options, you only need to look to the goals scored and goals conceded to see we've failed to score as much as any of the top four this season. We are struggling in defence? Only one goal worse than Liverpool, and one goal better than Spurs in 5th. Meanwhile in goals scored, we're 22 goals worse off than Liverpool. The closest of the top four? Chelsea, at the top, with six goals more than us. We're an attacking side by nature while chelsea are a defending team, though, so I prefer to compare to the other sides. Did we need Mata? Not really, but we needed players who would improve us and I think he is one of the few available that would have.
What we really need to do is break the bank next season. And I mean really break the bank. We need to drop Rio along with the alread leaving Vidic, we need to spend as much as is required to bring in a high quality central midfielder or two and we need to build on that with a new central defender and a couple of wingbacks. There are no more Sir Alex Fergusons available to us to do the magical thing where they rise a group of players up 15 points per season beyond what they would normally get. That means we have to get rid of players who are not good enough without him. We are now competing with the likes of City and Chelsea who can afford to buy superstars that could compete for a title under any decent manager. If we want to compete with that... we have to, financially. Woodward can certainly bring in commercial contracts, but we need to see if he can bring in the players, too.
And Moyes will, indeed, need to show that he can manage them into a winning position.
Okay, after typing up all that I realised it's length.tl;dr: I agree with the middle of that article where they talk about his management of players and how he is perhaps not getting enough out of them, but don't think the former half is much more than typical tabloid sensationalism where someone picks out some quotes and turns them against the person.
For everything said about United under Moyes, the players yesterday could have been playing for SAF, they were battering Fulham (and not just through crosses). Sadly, Fulham were immense in defence, particularly their goalkeeper who stopped them from suffering a 4-1 scoreline at half time. It reminded me of a Sunderland game a long time back under SAF, where we spent the entire game camped in their half while they were fighting relegation (or were already relegated?) and they came away with a point. Only this was actually more entertaining than that awful game, as I believe it ended 0-0 on that one. What Moyes got wrong was over-swamping the attack because of this, and when the counter came in with one minute to spare, the attacking players did not work hard enough for their defence (and Vidic was Vidic, too old).
