How Manchester United's new manager David Moyes worked his way to the top "The people who ran it in my day were Andy Roxburgh and Craig Brown," says Alex McLeish, another Largs graduate. They were meticulous in their preparation, and these are traits that Davey has got in abundance. Indeed, Phil Neville has claimed that at Everton, every morning before training, Moyes personally checks every single football to make sure it is the correct pressure. But while Moyes may be painstakingly meticulous in his own work, he likes to communicate ideas as simply as possible. He prefers visual solutions - training ground drills and video scouting - to lengthy dossiers. "He understood that some players might not understand him talking," says Kevin Gallacher, one of Moyes" signings for Preston, "so he put it into pictures and on the field." A Moyes training session is often brutal in its simplicity. Sessions are undertaken at as close to match-pace as possible, with the pitch divided into squares as a visual aid to positioning. Another exercise sees three small goals placed across the width of the pitch to encourage his team to switch play to the opposite flank as quickly as possible. Sometimes a new idea will be tried. In September, Moyes" academy chief Alan Irvine saw Juventus striker Fabio Quagliarella scoring at Stamford Bridge after a perfectly-timed blindside run. The pair decided to recreate the drill in training, with Nikica Jelavic making the diagonal run in between the centre-backs. Just over a week later, Jelavic scored against Southampton with exactly that run. Tactically, Moyes is a pragmatist. Carlo Ancelotti rated him as the hardest manager to prepare against during his time at Chelsea: astute, flexible and adaptable to circumstances. "There was no doubt that to beat a David Moyes team you had to be on your top-notch level," said McLeish, who faced him as both Birmingham and Aston Villa manager. If he was organised, it was difficult to penetrate. His teams always created chances. Is there such a thing as the "Moyes shape"? "I don't think it really takes a lot of working out," says McLeish. The banks of four is a very well-organised structure. But you've got wide men - Steven Pienaar and Apostolos Vellios - not necessarily playing as out-and-out wingers, but coming in and linking with the forwards, playing in between the lines and getting into spaces. It's actually very positive football, but at the same time he makes sure that they're very difficult to beat. Moyes drills his defence and midfield by playing 9 v 11 practice matches at full intensity, improving positional sense, teamwork and stamina. "He was brought up in an era where your back four was like a piece of string," says Gallacher. That piece of string can't be broken. It is not just his tactics that are rigidly disciplined. "I remember my first trip down to Gillingham before I signed," Gallacher says. Gillingham battered them 5-0. I just stood outside the dressing room after the game and you could hear everything he said. Talk about the hairdryer treatment. He had a right go at the lads, but they responded. "I've seen when he's been livid and raging, but when you need a bit of support, you can have a conversation with him," adds Murdock. If you go to a club like United, it's such an international dressing room. It's impossible to treat people the same way. If someone needs an arm around the shoulder, if someone needs the cattle prod, Moyesy will be pretty good at giving both. Having begun his career under Ferguson, Murdock believes Moyes is a natural successor. "He understands the whole social fabric, the history of the club and the people who support it," he says. "He's one of the few managers I've worked under who involved players" families in the success of the team. Even his wife would get involved, organising social events. That was important, because players move around, and wives can feel a little bit alienated. Moyes was very focused on keeping everybody involved. What remains to be seen is whether he has the ego, the personal magnetism, to sell his vision to United's galaxy of world-class stars. Fleeting, for one, is convinced. "Show me a coach that's not got an ego," he said. I don't believe there's one. It's just how you use it. David is a very humble guy and within that, yeah, he's got an ego. And now he's made it.