Days of the old-boys' brigade will be harder to find, insists Moyes

EARLIER this week, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp expressed his gratitude that West Ham’s board had backed David Moyes through a troubled campaign, if only for the fact it prevented him, at the age of 55, from becoming the Premier League’s oldest boss.

- Malik Ouzia

After turning 60 on Tuesday, Moyes joked he was thankful for Roy Hodgson’s return to Crystal Palace for much the same reason.

Tomorrow’s meeting of the London clubs is also one between the League’s two eldest statesmen, although that categorisation is a little unkind to Moyes: at 15 years younger, he is Hodgson’s closest contemporary in the same way that Adelaide is the city of Perth’s nearest neighbour at a distance of 2,000 kilometres away.

Hodgson is an outlier, an extraordinary case, having been dragged out of retirement to surpass his own record as the Premier League’s oldest-ever manager in a bid to keep Palace up, a job that looks done, even with five games still to go.

That Moyes, though, is the only manager in the division in his sixties — and only four days into them at that — is indicative of a wider trend, one that suggests the kind of top-level longevity achieved by the Hammers boss will be increasingly tough to match amid the quickening churn and intensifying strain of modern management.