He put his players in a system that got the best out of them, which meant the likes of gerrard, kuyt, benayoun and torres went onto play a lot better then they have either before or since because the system was set up to maximise their skills. And he knew how to kill a game dead against a superior side by making good defensive subsitutions.
His Valencia team were one of the first teams in Europe to set up in the 4-5-1 that's so popular now, with two holding midfielders and an actual attacking three behind the front man rather than simply two wingers and a forward who drops deep. Which meant they outnumbered the more traditional sides in midfield and could choke games and win 1-0, and then when he went more attacking, he demonstrated that advancing the wingers to support a lone forward could be really dangerous if they cut in rather than stick to the sidelines.
And at Liverpool he used hamann, and later mascherano, as a man marker to shackle the playmakers of opposing teams and make a really ropey back four airtight. He was a defensive manager but he was good at it. They would get 0-0s away at Barcelona and Real Madrid etc. The problem with Moyes is we're often quite bad at parking the bus. We invite pressure that we can't cope with.
