Former West Ham manager David Moyes has been given both barrels by controversial TalkSport host and former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan.
Moyes had been speaking over the weekend after being asked about the treatment of Graham Potter following his sacking at West Ham.
It’s clear Moyes was unimpressed with how the Hammers board handled Potter’s dismissal and made a plea for better treatment. The Scotsman argued that managers in other industries, and people in everyday life, are treated far better than Premier League football bosses.
“Entitled Claptrap”: Former Palace boss Jordon was unimpressed with the Everton boss defending ‘sensitive’ managers
Jordan Unimpressed With Moyes’ Comparison
However, when this viewpoint was put to Jordan, he made it clear he didn’t buy the comparison between multimillionaire coaches and ordinary 9–5 workers.
“I would imagine — and I like David a lot — in David’s wide experience of other industries and how managers are treated, he can speak from a reference point of understanding that he’s been a football manager and a football player all his life. Posited and institutionalised and protected from the outside world,” Jordan said.
“He’s got an axe to grind with West Ham for, I think, legitimate reasons, because I don’t think he was treated very well by the fans at West Ham at times and by the board in terms of the work that he did and the way his contract was just allowed to run down.
“But with all due respect to Moyes, you cannot suggest that you can compare the opportunities and travails of a football manager — and the upsides of being one — to any other walk of life.”
To be fair to Jordan he has a point. No doubt Everton manager Moyes was seeing an opportunity to have a dig about his own treatment at the London Stadium. And let’s be honest here, neither Potter or Julen Lopetegui were treated well by the Hammers board when their time came to an end.
Good article and comments on here.
It’s seems a situation where all points of view are valid to some degree.
Football managers are treated both very very well (Salaries/benefits/privilege) and summarily dismissed with little care for their psychological wellbeing, but with huge payoffs.
The fans who leave the stadium when the match is on a knife’s edge, who boo the players after a close and hard-fought loss, who post face swaps to mock the manager, who stage large protests ahead of important games — do they really believe this behaviour improves the team’s performance?
It’s a kind of behaviour that is becoming normalized in an increasingly harsh society.
As one of those former industry managers, Jiordan has got it spot on. After 52 years in industry, I retired on about what Moyes earned in 3 months of his final year at West ham, so I would say West Ham treated him pretty well for what he delivered.
Given what PL managers/coaches earn I really don’t spend any time whatsoever thinking about how they’re treated. If they’re sacked they’re paid out for the remainder of their contracts which can be millions. They just don’t live on planet Normal.
Graham Potter often points out that he has been privileged to serve as manager of West Ham. This explains why he hasn’t complained and why his farewell message to the fans was so gracious. However, that doesn’t stop me from thinking that the behavior of the owners and some of the fans has been disgraceful
Floppy had an abundance of money to spend, pee’d off numerous players and had a massive payoff for under performing, Potter didn’t have the money to spend and had he started when Floppy did we may be a different team though he is still getting a huge payoff for doing next to nothing, as for Moyes he was a good manager for us and when let go it was for massively underperforming over 2.5 seasons in the PL we were easy to play against, conceding goals for fun, with little goal threat. We may have won in Europe but we should have won the season before and we could have qualified in CL positions a couple of times.
Don’t normally agree with Jordan but he makes good points when comparing Pl managers with normal 9-5 workers who often lose jobs without the huge payoffs and benefits.