Gary Neville and Roy Keane react to ‘Really Bad’ David Moyes situation at West Ham United
Gary Neville and Roy Keane have reacted to the way West Ham have gone about the future of David Moyes after it was announced he will leave at the end of the season.
The Hammers announced his exit after the 5-0 defeat to Chelsea, with Julen Lopetegui expected to come in after a public pursuit of a new manager in recent weeks.
Speaking on the Stick to Football podcast (10 May), Neville admitted he had sympathy for the club over the situation as they had to plan for the future with the manager’s future in doubt.
“It’s been a little bit messy this week,” he said.
“I’ve got a bit of sympathy for West Ham and to be fair, it didn’t look too good on the club. The leaks of a new manager coming in, Moyes is an unbelievable performing servant to West Ham.
“He didn’t deserve that at the end, but as a club owner or CEO, there’s a fine line between ending a manager’s tenure at the club and having the next one lined up and looking like you’re smart and you know what you’re doing, versus letting the manager go who has been there a long time, then starting to work out who it is and looking naive because you can’t get someone in.
“I think what West Ham have tried to do is make it smooth, and they’ve got their comms wrong.”
He then asked Keane on his thoughts on the situation, and the hot-headed Irishman admitted that he wasn’t a fan.
“It’s not been good. Absolutely,” he said. “Surely you can see, obviously his contract is up and David knows that.
“There’s not been chats the last few months so he will be moving on. What happened to clubs doing their business discreetly? There’s pictures of managers flying over to have chats and all that is getting out there.
“I think there’s ways of doing it, classy ways of doing it. David Moyes deserves better than that, he deserved better at Man United when he left Man United, the way that was handled.
“It’s really bad, no class.”
Gary Neville hit the nail on the head for West Ham United
It seems like most of the people who have been covering the Moyes situation in recent weeks have forgotten that West Ham exist in this scenario too.
Obviously it won’t be nice for Moyes to have to deal with all the speculation surrounding his future in the media, but there is no way he didn’t know about what was happening before that.
Moyes and the Hammers board will have held discussions and both would have known the plan going into the summer, but it’s clear they didn’t really intend to make a public statement until the season was over.
They can’t control agents leaking things out, and with nothing left to play for this season and performances on the pitch suffering the decision was made to bring the announcement forward to ensure he gets a good send off.
The fans will respond to that and he will be celebrated in his final game. It was definitely messier than anyone intended, but nobody did anything wrong in this situation.
In other West Ham news, Roy Keane has exploded at “idiot” Hammers players after what he saw.
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