What David Moyes Must Do to Rebuild Confidence in His Leadership

Finally, Moyes has to be put an end to his reputation as “Dithering Dave” when it comes to in-game management, especially substitutions. At this point, it’s become a painful joke to supporters.

With 5 substitutions available for Premier League teams during Project Restart, David Moyes has managed to use 3 against Wolves and only 2 against Tottenham. This is so frustrating for several reasons.

It must absolutely ruin the confidence of the players who haven’t been selected and that you could need during the final stretch of games. Imagine how Xande Silva or Albian Ajeti must feel when Michail Antonio was utterly exhausted on the pitch near the end of the Tottenham match and the gaffer still won’t call their number.

It also brings into question the match plan being devised by the coaching staff. There should be prearranged times and situations in the match where certain players have a good idea that their number may be called or that the team will be changing the formation to counteract the situation in the match. Bringing on pacy Ben Johnson for Cresswell when Traore was introduced is an example.

Instead, David Moyes seems content to make like for like changes, often only making substitutions with attacking intent once the other team has scored to go ahead. It’s simply another knock on his conservative decision making and inability to transform the game with a brilliant substitution or formation change.

And finally, with the end of the Premier League season playing out over the course of the month, squads have to be rotated to ensure they don’t suffer complete burnout. There were several opportunities early in the second half of the Spurs match where players such as Mark Noble and Michail Antonio were showing signs of fatigue and yet they were left on the pitch. It’s baffling.

The manager simply can’t afford to be risk-averse with his line-ups and substitutions over the final 7 games of the campaign. He has to find a way to think outside the box and make radical personnel decisions that challenge the other managers and make them react, rather than throwing out the same tired formations and players that haven’t been good enough.

It’s not the ideal time for a manager like David Moyes to change his approach but West Ham’s survival may be reliant on it.