I remember I nearly cried afterwards because I was that pleased I had won a game," he recalled. Moyes has had to roll with the punches from the very start. In truth I probably believed that I could be a better manager than I was player. The former Celtic, Cambridge and Shrewsbury centre-back would eventually lead Preston to promotion to the Championship, and to within 90 minutes of the Premier League - they were beaten by Bolton in the play-off final - before Everton came calling.
Moyes replaced Walter Smith at Goodison and led the Toffees to nine top-eight finishes - including fourth place in - in his 11 full seasons in charge. The Scot was subsequently hand-picked by Sir Alex Ferguson to succeed him at Manchester United, but his dream job turned into a nightmare and 10 months later he was sacked.
For any failings that are of his own doing, it must be said that Moyes has been let down by United behind the scenes too. Executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward was the man blamed by many for the club moving at a snail's pace in the transfer market, with somewhat unrealistic deals for the likes of Cesc Fabregas and Thiago Alcantara targeted but never pulled off.
Much better organisation is needed to sort out the club's issues in the transfer market. He could then walk past the Sir Alex Ferguson statue, take his seat in the dugout opposite the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand and look behind him to the director's box to see Sir Alex Ferguson sitting there.
Of course it is only right that United pay tribute to such a titanic, staggeringly successful figure in their history, but it is hardly helping the man currently trying to fill his massive shoes.
There are times while watching a United game on television that you'd be forgiven for thinking that Ferguson was still the manager and merely serving one of his frequent touchline bans given the amount of times he's picked out by the camera, and maybe the club could handle this in a better way. Does he have to be at every game? He went seven games without winning in the league — he even started himself in a defeat by Carlisle — and the relief was immense when he tasted victory at the eighth time of asking, beating Bournemouth Moyes, who has performed wonders at West Ham since returning to the London Stadium in December , still feels like crying.
We want to be successful. There is no doubt that Moyes, who started his coaching badges in his early 20s, has been a success. He shone at Preston, leading them to promotion, and did a brilliant job at Everton after joining in He was sacked before the end of his first season at United , who had given him a six-year deal, and his reputation plummeted.
He was written off as negative and outdated, especially after he had a middling spell at Real Sociedad and then failed to keep Sunderland in the Premier League. It was something I felt I had to take. Sometimes you have to have the bad times to get some good times and get the opportunities. Even Sir Alex had some bumpy times. He has tried to make training sessions more enjoyable. His work as a Uefa technical observer has kept him abreast of tactical trends. His relentless focus on set pieces has turned West Ham into one of the leading Premier League sides in that aspect of the game.
All of this may explain part of the whole but they barely scratch at the whole itself: the boring, incremental, unscientific day-to-day work of improving players, drilling their roles, cohering the various parts of a club into a cogent, happy unit. Thomas Tuchel can simultaneously have been the wrong man for Borussia Dortmund in and the right man for Chelsea now.
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