Alex Ferguson was brilliant, but did he deserve £2m a year?

Manchester United have axed Sir Alex Ferguson’s contract as an ‘ambassador’ for the club, and it is not clear whether the most shocking part of this news is that he has been put out to grass by new owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe or that he was getting £2.16 million a year to shake hands with executive box customers (the ones Roy Keane famously called ‘the prawn sandwich brigade’).

Sir Alex is a club legend, of course. He will be 83 at the end of this year, and is said to not be in the best health these days. He also lost his wife, Cathy, a year ago. He’s also had to suffer watching a substandard United team for the past 11 years, unable to come anywhere close to the kind of team he moulded during his reign – a reign that made him the most successful manager ever in this country.