The right man at right time

It’s interesting. The reaction of many Reds to Louis van Gaal’s confirmation as our new boss has been the same as their reaction to David Moyes’ sacking: "About bloody time, too."

Even the deafest dogs on the street knew for the past fortnight that the Dutchman was a shoo-in, and I wrote in these pages within 48 hours of Moyes leaving that it would almost certainly be Louis.

But during lulls in proceedings, we have been fed rumours that Jose Mourinho was in with a late chance, that Ryan Giggs might still have got it, and even that Carlo Ancelotti had turned it down — none of which was true. Granted, Ed Woodward initially gave a very good impression of a man conducting a proper global search on an open-minded basis, but most of us didn’t believe it for a second, not least because the Van Gaal stories had started up long before Poor David’s defenestration.