Preview: Aston Villa VS Manchester United

Rooney and Kagwa could form a key partnership in van Persie’s absence

Time, they say, is a commodity David Moyes has earned. Time for the Scot to revitalise a fading side after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement last summer. Time for Moyes to remodel United in his own image. Time to restore the club to a primacy lost over the past six months. Precious time. Time, also, it seems to undo much of the work achieved by Ferguson in a season too often characterised by utter incompetence.

It started in the summer, with executive vice president Ed Woodward flaunting his lack of transfer market nous all over Europe – to much hilarity among United’s peers on the continent. More than £27 million spent on Marouanne Fellaini became the summer’s punchline. One funny only to those resident beyond M16.

Then Moyes fired, replaced or drove away many of Ferguson’s coaching staff, instigating a waterfall of change that was totally unnecessary and ultimately counterproductive. United’s tactics, too, have regressed sharply, leaving the Reds stagnant, incoherent and frankly, at times, seemingly from another age altogether.

But if that ranks as incompetence, or at best misjudgment of a club’s requirements, then it pales into comparison with Moyes’ handling of Robin van Persie this season.

The Dutchman, an expensive, brilliant jewel whose capture last summer brought one final Premier League title to Sir Alex, is notoriously fragile. In nine seasons with Arsenal van Persie spent far too long in the treatment room – finding consistent fitness in his final campaign with the north Londoners.

Sensible, then, for the striker to take an active role in both his training and participation at United. He is a player who understands the limits of his body. And it is in this context that rumours of the Dutchman’s unhappiness with Moyes’ training regime have flourished. van Persie was, after all, deliberately “over-trained” in the summer – a practice denounced in some quarters as being from “Jurassic Park.”

Then to the past week, when Moyes admitted leaving the striker on the pitch against Newcastle United for the full 90 minutes because of a concern about the public reaction to a substitution. van Persie had missed almost a month of the campaign with a groin injury leaving Moyes’ admission, as the kids say, something of a WTF moment. One that has proven devastating to United’s hopes this season.

There was little surprise with the announcement on Friday that van Persie is set to miss a month of football with a thigh injury – it could be nine games before the Dutchman returns, possibly against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on 18 January.