What Robin van Persie's "zone" remarks reveal about Man United's struggle to adapt to Moyes

Robin van Persie had some interesting things to say about Man United's 2-0 first leg Champions League round of 16 loss to Olympiacos last night. From the Guardian:

"Our fellow players are sometimes occupying the spaces I want to play in. And when I see that it makes it difficult for me to come to those spaces as well. So that forces me to adjust my runs, based on the position of my fellow players. And unfortunately, they're often playing in my zones. I think that's a shame."

The striker, who missed a good chance towards the end of the game, defended Moyes, however. "He's working hard at it, and so are we. Sometimes we play well, but not all the time. We don't have luck on our side. It's easy to point the finger at someone, but I'm not like that. We have to do better ourselves."

And here we can reverse engineer at least in part an explanation for United's struggles under Moyes. What follows is utter speculation based on the flimsiest evidence, which puts it about on par with your average sports column. Anyway, last May, Michael Cox used in part a tutorial Moyes once gave to Elite Soccer magazine to lay out his tactical approach: 

David Moyes is a particular fan of "segmenting" his training pitch to encourage players to cover space efficiently. One format involves the playing area divided into 24 equal squares, so the defence play high up the pitch, the wide players stretch the play, and the attackers rotate position.

Another setting has the pitch divided lengthways into six narrow bands of 12 yards each – the back four must occupy the nearest four "bands" when the ball is on one flank, then the middle four when the ball is in central positions. There's also a strong importance placed upon positional responsibilities at transitions from attack to defence, with players ordered to organise themselves immediately, usually into two banks of four.

These segments or "zones" could be exactly what RvP is referring to in his spiel against his team-mates. Now, this personally strikes me as a difficult system to adapt to, particularly after Ferguson's approach which was far more instinctive in attack, as I wrote last August. This could be an early sign of problems with the United players in adopting the approach in a game situation. But the flip side, if you accept this interpretation, is that Moyes still needs more time for his system to gel at Old Trafford. Anyway, just a thought.