David Moyes 'never showed any interest in our youth team', claims Everton youth coach Kevin Sheedy

Toffees youth coach made the comments as United lost 3-0 to Liverpool

Everton coach Kevin Sheedy (GETTY IMAGES)

David Moyes’s reputation received yet another dent yesterday when Kevin Sheedy, youth coach at his former club Everton, accused the under-fire Manchester United manager of showing little interest in the club’s academy during his time at Goodison Park and suggested the Merseysiders were better off without him.

After the mocking “David Moyes is a football genius” banner paraded by Liverpool supporters during their team’s 3-0 victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford on Sunday, a rather more damaging barb was directed at Moyes by Sheedy, a significant figure in Everton’s highly regarded youth system.

Sheedy, the former Everton and Republic of Ireland midfielder now in charge of the club’s Under-18 side, took to Twitter to declare: “All of you out there Moyes was never interested in our youth team or players. In my seven years Moyes showed no interest in our youth team.”

Sheedy went on to echo a view shared by a sizeable number of Goodison regulars that Moyes’s naturally cautious mindset impacted not just on his use of youngsters but his tactics, too. “We now have a manager who wants to win games,” Sheedy tweeted about Roberto Martinez.

As for Sunday’s embarrassment against Liverpool, he questioned Moyes’s tactics – “Punt the ball up to [Marouane] Fellaini. Great viewing” – and also tweeted “Dithered again”, probably in reference to the fact Moyes did not make a single substitution until the 76th minute.

The tweet about Moyes’s lack of interest in the youth team was later deleted – as Everton privately distanced themselves from Sheedy’s comments – but it is not the first time that he has voiced this opinion, having previously said the same to The Independent shortly after the Scot’s departure for Old Trafford. Speaking in May, Sheedy, who returned in 2006 to work at the club where he won two league titles in the 1980s, said of Moyes: “I can only speak from experience – the manger didn’t get involved with the academy at all. His time was spent with the first team.”

After Sunday’s home capitulation against Liverpool marked a new low in Moyes’s fortunes at Old Trafford, the Scot has bigger things to worry about than a few digs from an old colleague, although the perception that he may not be the best man to develop young talent at United will hardly sit well with supporters.

In Moyes’s defence, he has not hesitated to use 19-year-old Adnan Januzaj in United’s first team this season and during his 11 years at Everton he gave debuts to future England internationals Wayne Rooney, Leon Osman, Jack Rodwell and Ross Barkley.

Indeed Rooney and Rodwell were just 16 when Moyes fielded them in Everton’s first team, though Barkley, 17 at the time of his debut in August 2011, offers an interesting case in point. After an error-ridden display on his second league outing at Blackburn, Barkley did not start another game until April 2013 after loan spells at Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds.