File picture of Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson (left) with then Everton manager David Moyes towards the end of the English Premier League match at Old Trafford Manchester, Britain.

By Jamie Jackson, The Guardian/London

The plane is on the runway at Manchester Airport but the captain is not on board. A club source confirms Nemanja Vidic has suspected sciatica. David Moyes is about to navigate his first tour as Manchester United manager through the testing lands of Thailand, Australia, Japan and China without his on-pitch lieutenant. But while Vidic will play no part, it is the player who is to join the central defender as a tour absentee almost as soon as United arrive in Bangkok who will exercise minds throughout.
Tour Life. No one really likes it. One senior member of the party confesses that he detests being away with the club for so long. These are to be three long weeks. A blur of time zones and hotels and football fields and sponsorship appearances and never, ever, ever straying off-message. The Holy Grail of the Manchester United footballer on tour: do not create needless headlines. They will find you anyway.
Within hours of United landing there is a major story. Wayne Rooney has a hamstring injury and is to return straight home for treatment. The conspiracy junkies are in clover. And who can blame them? There is no secret that the Liverpudlian is unhappy following a seismic falling-out with Sir Alex Ferguson towards the end of last season and is desperate to leave for Chelsea. And with Rooney having only two years left on his contract the question is who will blink first. If the club want to cash in now he will achieve his wish. If United stand firm and are happy to allow Rooney’s contract to wind down should he refuse to agree another, then this leverage becomes neutered.

The grilling
The Cut Bar & Grill in downtown Sydney is a high-end restaurant for the movers and shakers who pass through the city. And for the wannabe movers and shakers who pass through the city. What the difference is, who knows … It is a quasi-kind of place. No one really has fun in here. They only think they do. All the fun is happening elsewhere. The place has soft lights and soft sounds and seems always to have been at this point now, approaching 8pm, the evening about to move from quietude to a rising murmur in anticipation of something that never arrives. It’s what this – all these – places are about.
The joint’s pièce de résistance is Wagyu beef – Japanese Black, Japanese Polled, Japanese Brown and Japanese Shorthorn – the finest of fine steaks real money can buy. The wine list teems with fine Shiraz and Malbec and Pinot Noir. Some of these come in at 1,450 Australian dollars – around £1,000 – so it’s nice Manchester United are hosting. There is probably a waiting list to dine here. And a guest list. And a VIP list. And a VVIP list.
On the evening of 18 July 2013 at around, yes, eight o’clock, the correspondents covering Manchester United for the daily newspapers have assembled for dinner with David Moyes, the tour ‘sit-down’ as it is known. Yet this nearly doesn’t happen. Today is a Thursday. Word has come that Moyes is furious with some of his fellow diners and has considered cancelling due to stories splashed on websites on Sunday evening and on the front and back pages of the newspapers the following day. The opening line of the Guardian’s account reads: “Wayne Rooney has been left in no doubt regarding his position at Manchester United with David Moyes, the manager, issuing a stark message that the striker is considered vital only if ‘we had an injury to Robin van Persie’. Ed Woodward, United’s executive vice-chairman, also underlined the hard-line stance towards Rooney, claiming the club have no fear of a player’s deal running down.’

The history man
There is a certain amount of disbelief at this performance near the bar of the Cut Bar & Grill. But on the credit side (and he deserves a large amount), despite being seriously cheesed off, Moyes is still here and about to sit down and enjoy a good meal and a drink and an honest, expansive chat. Who can argue with that? At the table after this start to the working relationship some feel more awkward than others. The atmosphere might not be great but that’s football journalism. The same people have to be dealt with most weeks of the year. The relationship, the world, is an odd one. There are genuine moments of warmth and there are squabbles and disputes. There are forced situations where the manager or press officer or whoever has just been argued with has to be spoken to again on some other matter, sometimes instantly and, of course, courteously.
This is a fine illustration. The atmosphere soon thaws and Moyes is as engaging and as open as he can be. The wine flows. As do the words. Someone asks what advice stands out from the barrage he received on becoming Manchester United manager. “‘You’ll do it easy’,” Moyes says. “But I’m not saying who it was. I don’t take that as a given, because I know it’s going to be really hard at Manchester United. I know that.” There is a straight answer about why he brought his own backroom team and Ferguson’s were told to leave.
“I needed it to be David Moyes’s era now, so that meant me taking some of my own people.’ He is also clear that: ‘It has to be a new era. Whatever we say, my job now is to make my history. I’m going to be following someone who has made incredible history. I think about Matt Busby’s history and then Alex Ferguson’s history – they could do a film about it. I have to make sure now that my history and my time is something which the fans and people in the future talk about.”
This sums up the monster Moyes is grappling with. And considering his former unhappiness at how his words on Rooney were reported, he is now relaxed. He talks freely of being the manager for 10 or 15 years, and building his own dynasty and emulating Busby and Ferguson. “I’d really like that, not just because of the history of Scottish managers, but I think there has been a succession of Scottish managers – Bill Shankly, Jock Stein, Sir Matt, George Graham – you could go on and on. I’ve probably missed a few out.