David Moyes was sacked from Manchester United after leading them through a seventh-place finishing season. Carl Court / AFP
David Moyes was sacked from Manchester United after leading them through a seventh-place finishing season. Carl Court / AFP
David Moyes was sacked from Manchester United after leading them through a seventh-place finishing season. Carl Court / AFP
David Moyes was sacked from Manchester United after leading them through a seventh-place finishing season. Carl Court / AFP

For Moyes at United, pre-match ban may have been the chip to break the camel’s back


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Rio Ferdinand has highlighted a series of mistakes which he believes David Moyes made during his dismal Manchester United tenure, starting with the banning of chips the night before matches.

The Queens Park Rangers defender, who endured an unhappy return to Old Trafford on Sunday as his side were thrashed 4-0 by his former employers, has given some insights into what happened during Moyes’ turbulent 10 months in charge.

In his autobiography #2Sides, which is being serialised by The Sun, the 35-year-old centre-back revealed the players were confused by mixed messages from Moyes, frustrated by his mentality and angered by changes in routine, such as the chips being taken away.

He said: “It’s not something to go to the barricades over (the chips). But all the lads were [unhappy]. And guess what happened after Moyes left and Ryan Giggs took over?

“Moyes has been gone about 20 minutes, we’re on the bikes warming up for the first training session and one of the lads says: ‘You know what? We’ve got to get on to Giggsy. We’ve got to get him to get us our … chips back.’”

Ferdinand says he was excited to work with Moyes when he first took over from Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013, but decided it was time to walk away from Old Trafford when he was dropped for United’s crunch Champions League clash with Bayern Munich earlier this year.

The former England defender, who has 81 caps, was infuriated by Moyes’ decision to let him know he was not playing in front of the rest of the squad, while they trained in a “public park”, something Ferdinand labelled “amateurish”.

At that point, which he says was his lowest ebb in 12 years at United, he knew it was time to think about moving on.

United lost 3-1 in Munich, but less than two weeks later Moyes was clearing out his desk and saying his goodbyes at Carrington himself. Moyes was dismissed on April 22 after intense speculation following a 2-0 defeat at Everton two days earlier.

Ferdinand believes the Scot was “unlucky” with the way his 10 months at Old Trafford turned out, but ultimately Moyes misunderstood what was required at United.

Ferdinand felt Moyes would have benefited from keeping some of the coaching staff established by Ferguson at the club, highlighting how worrying too much about the opposition created fear in the dressing room.

“Before every game he made a point of showing us videos of how dangerous the other team could be. On the morning of a game we’d spend half an hour on the training ground, drilling to stop them,” he said.

“There was so much attention to the subject it suddenly became a worry – they must be … good at this to have us spend all this time on it.”

He also recalled a video meeting with Nemanja Vidic and Moyes, dissecting the 4-1 defeat to local rivals Manchester City, and how he emerged afterwards with no idea what the Scot was trying to convey.

He added: “You heard a lot of guys complaining: ‘I just don’t know what he wants.’

“He had me doubting everything.”

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PRISCILLA
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Key facilities
  • Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
  • Premier League-standard football pitch
  • 400m Olympic running track
  • NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
  • 600-seat auditorium
  • Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
  • An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
  • Specialist robotics and science laboratories
  • AR and VR-enabled learning centres
  • Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
How the UAE gratuity payment is calculated now

Employees leaving an organisation are entitled to an end-of-service gratuity after completing at least one year of service.

The tenure is calculated on the number of days worked and does not include lengthy leave periods, such as a sabbatical. If you have worked for a company between one and five years, you are paid 21 days of pay based on your final basic salary. After five years, however, you are entitled to 30 days of pay. The total lump sum you receive is based on the duration of your employment.

1. For those who have worked between one and five years, on a basic salary of Dh10,000 (calculation based on 30 days):

a. Dh10,000 ÷ 30 = Dh333.33. Your daily wage is Dh333.33

b. Dh333.33 x 21 = Dh7,000. So 21 days salary equates to Dh7,000 in gratuity entitlement for each year of service. Multiply this figure for every year of service up to five years.

2. For those who have worked more than five years

c. 333.33 x 30 = Dh10,000. So 30 days’ salary is Dh10,000 in gratuity entitlement for each year of service.

Note: The maximum figure cannot exceed two years total salary figure.

The Details

Kabir Singh

Produced by: Cinestaan Studios, T-Series

Directed by: Sandeep Reddy Vanga

Starring: Shahid Kapoor, Kiara Advani, Suresh Oberoi, Soham Majumdar, Arjun Pahwa

Rating: 2.5/5 

EU Russia

The EU imports 90 per cent  of the natural gas used to generate electricity, heat homes and supply industry, with Russia supplying almost 40 per cent of EU gas and a quarter of its oil. 

Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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