MANCHESTER // David Moyes arrived at Manchester United’s Carrington training ground shortly after 5am Tuesday morning. It was still dark.
The sun had never really risen on his time at the club and he knew it was going to be a long, difficult day.
When he left the modern complex located on lush fields beyond Manchester's western urban fringe seven hours later, Moyes was no long United's manager.
He had more success in avoiding the waiting, rain-sodden media crowded around one entrance to the training ground than he did in his 10 months in charge at Old Trafford.
[ In pictures: David Moyes’s worst moments in charge of Manchester United ]
Moyes drove away by a back entrance usually used by players, having met the club’s executive vice chairman Ed Woodward face-to-face. Woodward delivered the news that neither of them would have expected at the start of the season.
Back then they were two men new to their jobs at one of the world’s biggest football clubs.
They hoped to replicate the strength in unity of their predecessors, Sir Alex Ferguson and David Gill, hoped for continuity at the helm of a successful trophy-winning Manchester United who won titles and competed with football’s giants.
Instead, United have had their worst season since 1988/89 and will finish outside the top three for the first time since 1991. It has not been good enough.
[ A timeline of David Moyes’s lowlights at Manchester United ]
Ryan Giggs, who was asked to step up and takeover from Moyes on the way home from United’s limp 2-0 defeat at Everton on Sunday, will take charge until a new manager is appointed.
That is expected to be at the end of the season, but no time scale has been agreed. Local boy Giggs is said to be delighted at the prospect of managing the club he has represented on 962 occasions, a club he joined 27 years ago, when he was 13.
He will be assisted by his former United teammate Nicky Butt, who has been in charge of the club’s reserve team.
Giggs arrived at Carrington at 8.30am, the first player into training. He shares a locker room with Moyes and his coaches, some of whom will stay; others will depart after the inglorious results of this season.
Before the announcement of Moyes’s departure, Giggs had been expected to leave the club he has served so well, but situations change quickly in football.
His relationship with Moyes could have been much healthier, though he knew better than to speak out publicly against his boss.
Instead, he has bided his time and will take charge of a squad he knows far better than Moyes. He is also more respected in the dressing room than the Glaswegian ever was.
Moyes is a good coach and will continue to be in demand in football, but he was the wrong fit for United, the wrong choice.
Giggs wants to be a manager and has completed all of his coaching badges, no mean achievement given that he is still playing in his 40th year.
Though there will be no celebrations, Giggs is one of several United players who will not be stressed at Moyes's departure.
Now that Moyes is no longer, Giggs will become United’s second player-manager. Clarence “Lal” Hilditch was the other between October 1926 and April 1927. Like Giggs he was a left winger. Like Moyes he won no major trophies at Manchester United.
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