David Moyes supports Antonio Conte’s decision to take time off as managers face relentless strain

On Sunday afternoon, Moyes will take his West Ham side to north London to meet a Spurs outfit led by assistant boss Cristian Stellini while Conte remains at home in Italy recovering from gallbladder surgery.

After missing his side’s victory over Manchester City, Conte had initially defied doctor’s orders by returning to the UK ahead of schedule to take charge of last weekend’s defeat to Leicester but, following the Champions League loss at AC Milan in midweek, has now decided to stay in his homeland to rest.

Moyes will be aware of Conte’s frustration come Sunday, having himself been forced to watch West Ham matches from home after contracting Covid in September 2020, but says his opposite number is right to put his wellbeing first.

“Antonio has got to do it,” Moyes said. “I was only off with Covid, and I could have still come down, but it would have been no good for me and the health of others.

“Sometimes being the boss, if you are not well or not in the right mood, it is better not being there at all, being big enough to step aside and do what’s right.”

Player welfare has been a particularly hot topic this season, with concerns over burnout and an increased risk of injury following the midseason World Cup.

However, Moyes believes the added stresses are affecting managers, too, with increasingly small gaps between seasons in recent years, in part a knock-on effect of the pandemic.

“When you sign up to the job, we come back on July 1,” Moyes said. “I hope our season doesn’t finish until June 7 because that means we are in the Europa Conference League final. If that was the case, we have gone from July 1 to June 7 and you are asking a manager to go through that whole period without missing a day or not being in. Of course, we get a day off here and there but ultimately you are working every weekend, you are in a hotel every second weekend if you are away from home, so you do see the strains of modern of management come through.

“I did 11 years at one club [Everton] but I am not sure that managers will be able to do long, long stints at clubs because there are bigger stresses and health issues. Are they any different from before when it was Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger? Maybe not, but the number of games and with the way the programmes are going, it isn’t getting any easier. If you look at it, we have had three years with nearly no break.”

For managers, the only opportunity for prolonged time away from the game tends to come between jobs, with Moyes highlighting Pep Guardiola’s well-documented year-long sabbatical after leaving Barcelona in 2012.

However, the Scot feels the threat of being forgotten during an absence means less established coaches are often desperate to get back on the horse as soon as possible. Only this week, Jessie Marsch held talks over taking the Southampton job within days of being sacked by Leeds.

“I think at the moment there’s a bit of a revolving door,” Moyes added. “Jesse Marsch is a new manager [in the League] but he was at Red Bull in New York, then Salzburg, then Leipzig and made his way here. He’s experienced enough that maybe he is ready for six months out of that.

“The biggest one was Pep Guardiola, who took a year out and went to live in New York for a year, studied, did other things. There’s probably, of the modern era, the best manager around and even he had to step aside. Sometimes, it’s a bit underestimated how difficult the job can actually be.”