Manchester United have put themselves in a pretty good position to clamber back upon their perch domestically, given their tranfer splurge along with Jose Mourinho's outstanding second-season record: he has never not won the league in his second season in charge of a club.
It has only been four years since Ferguson retired, but much has been lost since, a series of diminishments which have manifested themselves in a failure to threaten the top three in any of the last four seasons.
The arrival of David Moyes ultimately ended up exposing some of the frailties Ferguson had concealed through his managerial genius: whereas United never lacked conviction against anyone under Ferguson, regardless of a perceived inferior pool of players (they beat Arsenal 8-2 with a midfield of Anderson and Tom Cleverly) they frequently looked lost and confounded under Moyes.
United simply lost belief in themselves under Moyes, and the following comments by former United coach Rene Meulensteen shed a bit of light on how Ferguson had drummed that belief into his players.
Writing for TrainingGroundGuru, Meulensteen explains how Ferguson would fill his players with such confidence in belief.
He always said, 'our approach is 75/25 -75% about us, 25% about the opposition. Because we are Man United.' It was about always reinforcing how good we were, how strong we were. A lot of teams do the opposite, showing clips of the opposition and making them look so good that you think ‘wow, what are we up against here?
It's an interesting read, and it is available in full here.
