David Moyes insists Manchester United are undergoing a major transition, as calls to remove the contentious “Chosen One” banner in his honour continue to increase.
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“It is underway in its own way,” he told Manchester Evening News. “You don’t just suddenly change things around.
“As I said the other day, a lot of other clubs have had to change and they have had to do rebuilding jobs and look at the time it has taken them to do that or get to a level of competing.
“We hope it won’t take us as long as some of those clubs have taken. I think we have got a period of time where we are going to have to make sure we get to that level which we are not at just now.”
United’s season took another turn for the worst on Tuesday as they suffered a 3-0 defeat to rivals Manchester City on Tuesday -- their sixth home loss in the league this season.
The performance led to much frustration at Old Trafford, with one fan having to be escorted out of the stadium after approaching the dugout to vent his anger at Moyes. Meanwhile, a number of supporters reportedly fired abuse at the United boss’s predecessor, Sir Alex Ferguson, who was sat in the directors' box.
But while Moyes can understand the ill feeling felt among Red Devils supporters, he wants them to understand that it is going to take time to restore success back to the club following Ferguson's retirement.
Ferguson hand-picked Moyes as his successor last summer, and for that reason a banner has hung in the Stretford End at Old Trafford that includes the current United boss' face with the words, “The Chosen One,” written alongside it.
Some fans called for the group that made the sign -- Stretford End Flags (SEF) -- to remove it after the 3-0 defeat to Liverpool earlier this month, while more supporters requested its removal after the City defeat. Stewards also gathered around the banner at full-time on Tuesday to prevent it from being seized.
The Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST), though, said it can understand why the club's fans are disappointed with the new regime.
“If your ego has been continuously set on success for 20 years and then suddenly you do not have it, it's obviously going to affect you emotionally in a difficult way," MUST spokesperson Sean Bones said.
However, MUST's Bones said the club’s problems are not solely down to the manager and blamed the Glazers, who took over in 2005, for their refusal to refusal to spend big in the transfer market.
“The Glazers have not invested correctly at the critical times," Bones said.
“The Glazers have had an element of success, but we feel that success was based on the investment made by the PLC in players like [Wayne] Rooney, [Cristiano] Ronaldo and Rio Ferdinand -- the very best possible players and we invested in the “Class of '92” and brought them through and the Glazers got the benefit of that.
“And the problem is when you don't invest correctly at the critical points, you get yourself into the position where there is a huge chasm of class between the ones who have invested and the ones who haven't and it costs a lot more to repair the damage. Sometimes it can take a long time to repair it."
MUST also said the Glazers made a mistake by allowing chief executive David Gill to leave Old Trafford at the same time as Ferguson.
“Last summer we had a new manager and a new CEO in Ed Woodward, he is unproven in that job as well, so it was a bad decision to allow that to happen," he said. “They could have held on to David Gill to try to assist the smooth running of the club."