David Moyes: Finding a way

Understanding culture

Moving into coaching was something Moyes thought about during his playing career, completing his qualifications in preparation for the time when he would have to hang up his boots.

“You have to find your own way to lead and what suits you,” he says, adding that taking his coaching qualifications gave him structured, formal access to ideas around leadership and management. “The thought of being around football people really excited me - people who know talked about football and wanted to communicate in that language. I really enjoyed listening to what they said, but I was also someone who went out looking to find new things.”

And for Moyes, that means putting in the time to and research before joining a new club or taking on a new role. That preparation ensures that he understands a little about the way the club operates and its ethos before he gets to his first day on the grass with the players.

And it’s stood him in good stead as he’s taken up roles at huge clubs with very distinct footballing cultures, such as Manchester United, West Ham United, and Real Sociedad.

“The values that I had then I still see as the same ones today: everybody needs to try and work hard, and probably more importantly, the manager needs to work harder than anybody in the building”

“If I get a chance to go to a club and watch a bit of training or get a chance to see some games, I always would go and do so. I think before you go to clubs, you have to have a little bit of your own culture, your own ideas, how you’re going to do it. But undoubtedly, when you join clubs like Manchester United, Real Sociedad, to name but two, I think you do need to know a little bit more and know a little bit about the culture because it’s very difficult to be a little bit of an unknown, going in to try and change or alter or reset any certain club’s ideas, and the way the clubs work.

“So for me, from that point of view, I don’t think I ever went into any club thinking that what I do would be the right thing for this club, I think you have to pick it up yourself and find out exactly what the clubs mean.”

When he had the chance to work in Spain, he was very aware that few British managers coached in the continental leagues, with some notable exceptions such as Bobby Robson, Howard Kendall and Terry Venables.

“I was coming into their environment and I had to work in their way, which was mainly all Basque players, and they were very keen that it was all their academy boys that were putting into the team,” he says.

Other challenges he faced there included learning the language and getting to grips with some cultural differences – from the weather to the mealtimes. He admits with hindsight that it took him longer to adapt to his new environment than might have been ideal, but adds that this was his own issue, not the club’s or the country’s.

“It was something which I had to adapt to. I was going to have to adapt to what happened in Spain - not Spain saying, ‘No, David Moyes is right and we’re going to let these challenges go!’”

Supporting young players

He has plenty of admiration for Real Sociedad’s commitment to bringing their own young players through. Moyes has always been keen to progress young players where possible, seeing it as an important part of his role to watch his club’s youth teams.

“I’ve given certainly five or six 16-year-olds a debut at different times in the Premier League at mainly Everton, in the early stages,” he says.

“You’re looking for the academy coaches to give you a real push to say, ‘Look, you should be getting this boy up to train with you. He’s doing so well. He’s stepped up.’

“I would rather have a smaller squad that leaves room for me to bring in young players, maybe room for two under-21 players to come and train with you, the best under-18 player maybe, rather than having a huge squad, which means that there’s no room for you to bring them up and have them round.”

He points to the young players at West Ham United who got the chance to be part of the squad for their European campaigns.

“It’s great development for these young players to get those opportunities,” he says, adding that head coaches have a responsibility to find the right career pathways for their youngsters. “We hope that they can all have football careers and I think sometimes as a manager you have to take pride in that. You might have to tell a young player, ‘Sorry, we don’t think we’re going to keep you, but we think that you could go and play for a lower league team and it would be better for you.’”

Creating a backroom staff

Listening to the opinions of backroom staff is crucial for a head coach, he says. When it comes to putting together his backroom staff, Moyes values people who are supportive and loyal as well as brave enough to highlight what they see as mistakes.

And he also recommends that head coaches allow their assistants and staff team to contribute their expertise and strengths, and to share their sense on how football and coaching are changing. As the oldest manager in the Premier League at the moment, this is something he feels very strongly - and one of his assistants now, Leighton Baines, is tasked with acting as more of a link between players and the coaching staff.

“My philosophy was that I had to find a way of winning with what I had, no matter what I had in the building, no matter how. I had to think, ‘How could I get the best out of it?’”

“I get him to make sure that he is keeping me young and I’m always wanting to hear what he’s got to say, what the players’ thoughts might be on ideas, what would he think - and he’s not long out of playing himself and being an England international.

“If you’re getting a bit older, then I do think that you need to bring in younger coaches.”

That doesn’t mean that a head coach has to adopt all the ideas a staff member suggests, or that they need to coach in the same way – but that variety is key.

“Sometimes you do need sessions which are incredibly entertaining, which will make the players think differently, give them different ideas. So my job as a head coach is to have enough people around me who can give me that environment and give me what I need, even if I can’t do it, that they’re able to bring that to the table.”

Future ambitions

Even with three decades of experience in management, and taking pride in his longevity at the highest level, Moyes still has some ambitions he’d like to achieve.

“I’d love to get the opportunity to take Everton back into Europe because I’ve had a couple of years where I’ve reached a quarter-final, a semi-final, a final,” he says. “I could give Everton players a chance to get to that and Everton supporters a chance to get to that in the future. It was magical times for me [at West Ham when they won the Conference League in 2023] because to be a winner of a European trophy as a coach is a big deal.”

When Moyes returned to Everton midway through the 2024-25 season, he was taking over a team who had not performed well in recent campaigns.

“I wanted to try and get them back playing as a team as much as I could, trying to get the best out of them,” he says, paying tribute to the defensive structure put in by his predecessor Sean Dyche.

“It gave me a way to say, ‘Well, I can build on that, but maybe find a way of counter-attacking better.’

“I didn’t look to change too much - the mentality a little bit, tried to gain some simple wins, different things, maybe small things that you think the players might have wanted changing. It was enough to move us out from the bottom end of the league and get us in quite a healthy position by the time the league season finished.”

And that mindset has been one he has adopted throughout his career.

“When you’re going into any club, you can always go in with the best ideas, but you can really only work with the players you’ve got now,” he says, adding that coaches can certainly have their own style and bring it to each club they work out, but that it hasn’t been the way he has chosen to work.

“My philosophy was that I had to find a way of winning with what I had, no matter what I had in the building, no matter how. I had to think, ‘How could I get the best out of it?’

“I’ve always felt that my job was to win.”