After a chastening 3-0 home defeat by bitter rivals Liverpool, Manchester United coach, David Moyes has conceded that he was finding his job harder than he could have ever envisaged.
The loss on Sunday was United’s ninth of the Premier League campaign, five of which have come at home, and carried echoes of the 4-1 humiliation at Manchester City in September that foreshadowed the club’s current struggles.
The defending champions mustered just one shot on target in the entire game, while Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers claimed with some justification that his side “could have scored five or six”.
In the end the visitors had to content themselves with a brace of Steven Gerrard’s penalties and a late Luis Suarez strike.
Gerrard squandered a chance to complete a rare hat-trick of penalties when he sent a third spot-kick against the post, but the scoreline was still enough for United striker Wayne Rooney to brand it “one of the worst days I’ve ever had in football”.
With United 12 points below the Champions League places, having played two more games than fourth-placed City, their hopes of reserving a berth in Europe’s premier club competition via the league have been all but dashed.
United also trail Greek champions Olympiakos 2-0 ahead of the second leg of their Champions League last 16 tie on Wednesday, making their chances of qualifying by winning the tournament appear almost equally remote.
It is only 10 months since Alex Ferguson stepped down as manager after overseeing the club’s 20th league title triumph, and Moyes admits that the pace of United’s decline has taken him by surprise.
“The job was always going to be hard,” he said. “Is it harder than I thought it would be? Yeah, I would say so.”
