Irish stars and commentators pay tribute

News of Alex Ferguson’s retirement received more than 1.4m mentions on Twitter in the first hour after the story broke yesterday morning, while the tweet from the club was re-tweeted or favourited more than 18,000 times.

Unsurprisingly, given the club’s Irish link and huge following here, many of the tributes came from Irish sports stars and commentators.

Former golf world number one and double major winner Rory McIlroy is a fan of the club and he took to Twitter to pay tribute to the only United manager he has ever known.