David Moyes Under Investigation for Alleged Assault in Bar

Updates from Friday, May 23

Two very different versions have emerged regarding the events that led to David Moyes being investigated for an alleged assault on Joshua Gillibrand on Thursday.

The Sun featured the story on its front page on Friday, as tweeted by Radio 4's Nick Sutton:

The Daily Mail had three reporters—Jaya Narain, Rosie Taylor and James Tozer—collaborate on the story, detailing what one witness claims to have seen on the night in question:

Moyes started to head in with his mates but he was being barracked by drinkers outside. He was getting a bit of lip from a couple of blokes and then one guy, who was a bit drunk, said something about him being s*** and having never won anything.
Moyes kept his head down and carried on walking towards the door with his friends and everyone thought he was just ignoring the banter. But then stopped, turned on his heels and quickly marched back.
Moyes had completely lost it and was bright purple in the face and quite clearly out of control.

Another witness is quoted saying:
Josh was giving him banter, I think it might have been a chant about him leaving Manchester United, nothing very offensive, and initially Moyes just walked past him into the bar.

But moments later Moyes came back outside, squared up to Josh and just threw him across the table – we couldn’t believe what we’d seen.

However, the Mirror's Paul Byrne reports that a "friend" of Moyes stated the following:

David had a meal with two friends and afterwards, at about 9.30pm, they were both walking past a bar when two lads started giving David abuse about Manchester United.
David grabbed one of them by his lapels, but didn’t hit him.
A police car happened to be parked opposite, so they were on the scene very quickly and no one was arrested or cautioned.

Original Text

David Moyes has been under fire for his performance as a manager on the pitch, but now he is potentially facing discipline off it.

According to James Ducker of The Times, Moyes is under investigation for an alleged assault at a wine bar in Lancashire, England:

Per ITV.com, the Lancashire Constabulary released a statement regarding the alleged incident.

Police are investigating a report of an assault at the Emporium wine bar in Clitheroe.
Officers attended the bar at about 10 p.m. BST yesterday (Wednesday, May 21) and it was reported that a 23-year-old local man had been assaulted by a 51-year-old man. He did not require hospital treatment.
Inquiries are ongoing and we are speaking to a number of people to try to establish the circumstances.
There are a number of differing accounts which we need to work through to try to establish exactly what has happened.
No one has been arrested at this stage.

This report comes on the heels of Moyes' ouster as Manchester United manager. Moyes gained a sparkling reputation after 11 fantastic years with Everton, but that success didn't translate to United as they finished a disappointing seventh in the EPL.

Despite Moyes' nightmarish tenure with the Red Devils, he is viewed as a hot managerial candidate for top clubs that are in search of a new boss.

According to Barry Anderson of the Edinburgh Evening News, Moyes is a potential top target for Celtic of the Scottish Premiership: Per b/r