David Moyes: Money is no Concorde that will fly Newcastle United to rapid success
There is no speedy route to Premier League success, David Moyes has warned the new owners of Newcastle United, saying that the league now has too many successful, well-run clubs to allow one to buy their way to a title.
The West Ham manager said that the time taken for Manchester City to establish a strong first team and infrastructure indicated that it would likely take Newcastle even longer.
“I would be surprised if there is a Concorde that can get them there any quicker,” he said. “In football, I think that is just the way it is, I don’t think you can do it that quickly.
“I don’t think there’s any quick situations for any of the clubs now. I think the Premier League is too strong, too powerful. So why, suddenly spending a load of money, do you think they are going to become the top. I personally don’t see that. I might be proved wrong in time.”
There was, he added, a much greater “stability” to many of the clubs. “There are too many good clubs in the Premier League who are run superbly well. Yeah, come in and buy all the best players in the world but I am not sure that gets you the best team and I think we have a lot of good teams in the Premier League.”
It is more than 16 years since Moyes led Everton to a fourth-place finish, and he is too polite to say it, but for all the investment by the Farhad Moshiri ownership since 2016, the club have never finished higher than seventh. A different league now to the days when Moyes was on the blue side of Merseyside and Rafael Benitez the red. He faces Benitez on Sunday at Goodison Park, with both having experienced many twists and turns in their career since those days as city rivals.
Moyes is fascinating on what it takes to build a club, and given his transformation of Everton, and now West Ham, it is arguably what he does best. On being appointed at Everton in 2002, he recalls then chairman Bill Kenwright telling him that he had just £5 million a year to spend on players and free rein to manage the club as he saw fit. What Moyes changed first were the low expectations.
“I remember thinking that Everton were just happy to be safe by Easter. That was it. Get safe by Easter.
“You have to build through the team. If you are going to bring in the best player in the world, yeah, that might help you but he has not got the best players around him. I am using a process here. I want us to put the foundations down and I think we have.”
In the likes of Kurt Zouma and Nikola Vlasic, he says he has as West Ham players who give a little depth to a squad which can look shorthanded beyond their first-choice pool of players.
“I think Newcastle will probably have to go through that building phase, I really do,” Moyes said. “I hear an awful lot of good things being said about what they are doing and how much they are going to spend. But if you look back – how many years did it take Man City? I can think back to the managers … I think they probably had to go through quite a big building phase, Man City, to get to the level they are at.”
His sixth-place finish with West Ham last season would be considered a success at Everton and something of a miracle at Newcastle – not least given the east London side’s situation when the league returned from lockdown last year. “I’m actually looking to see why I cannot challenge these teams?” Moyes said. “Why do I think that I have to roll over and let these teams finish above me? I’m certainly not doing that this year.”
