As the fan-plane flies over Old Trafford this Saturday trailing the ‘Wrong One’ banner — as opposed to the ‘Chosen One’ flag still hanging limply inside the ground — it is not only David Moyes who should be ready to dodge any bombs that may be dropped from that aircraft.

Sir Alex Ferguson could have done with a tin hat this week as Manchester United were embarrassingly thrashed in their home derby against City.

And not because their neighbours are no longer just noisy, but deafening.

It was the United supporters who started shouting abuse at the manager who has given them decades of glory.

How dare they.

Yet within months of him retiring the muttering began.Throw in all the FA Cups, League Cups and a World Club Cup and you have a body of work which demands consideration of Fergie as the greatest football manager of all time.This is the living legend who delivered unto them 38 trophies in 26 years, which just happened to include 13 Premier League titles and two European Cups, which is how I for one prefer to call the greatest club prize of all. How dare they.

Got out at the right time, didn’t he? Team failing apart, wasn’t it?

Never mind that he had just won the League title, yet again. That he had somehow conned Arsene Wenger into letting United have Robin van Persie and applied a red-hot poker to Wayne Rooney’s rear-end.

Who cares that he has a dodgy ticker and is hoping to spend a few years enjoying his family, his fine wine and his race-horses and, as if that’s a crime, take his seat in the directors’ box?

What is the matter with these people?

Ferguson’s crime, apparently, is recommending Moyes as his successor.

Not actually appointing Moyes, by the way. Just suggesting that he might be hewn from the same Glasgow rock-face so he was worth considering. A perfectly logical notion and one which struck a chord with not only that other knight of the football realm, Sir Bobby Charlton, but most of the fans at the time.

The owners — having failed to persuade Sir Alex to carry on — could not come up with a better idea. Nor, by the way, did the supporters.

And you have to ask: do they have a feasible candidate now?

If Ferguson made an error, it was not keeping his anointed one on ice until some other poor mug had been given the impossible task of being the first successor to such a hard act to follow.

Better to be the one after next.

Remember that Sir Matt Busby did not touch Fergie’s shoulder with his Scottish sword until a few others had tried and failed.

A period of transition was inevitable. Although it has to be said that no-one in the game thought it would be this traumatic.

While it is true that Sir Alex needed three or four years to rebuild the empire, he arrived at a time when serious decline had set in and rebuilding was one helluva task.

Whether the Fergie haters care to admit it or not, Moyes took over a going concern. He was also given so much money to spend that the United team are now more expensive than that of Middle East moneybags City.

So is it Ferguson’s fault that Moyes — with his cautious preference for experience over youth — failed to realise that his own protégé at Everton, Ross Barkley, would have been a more exciting as well as cheaper investment than Maroune Fellaini at £27.5 million?

Or are we really supposed to believe that Sir Alex would have rushed into buying a second-hand car from his shrewd old pal Jose Mourinho… and then played Juan Mata out of position?

Or that Fergie would have allowed any team of his — from East Stirlingshire to United — to roll over to Liverpool and City with hardly a fight?

So, yes, Moyes has made mistakes under pressure. He has also been too honest for his own good. No United manager should identify City as the team for them to look up to.

Perhaps the most significant blunder was clearing out his predecessor’s back-room staff, the way so many managers feel insecure unless they have their own old mates around them.

Mike Phelan and Rene Meulensteen know the players and the scene at Old Trafford inside out and could have eased him into office.

Perhaps an element of disappointment with that has been reflected in Paul Scholes and Gary Neville speaking out critically about the crisis engulfing their great club.

But Moyes is a big boy and a very well paid one, too. He must be man enough to take all the flak on the chin. Whether he survives it or not depends initially on how his team react against Aston Villa to the hostile fly-past and then, most dramatically of all, whether they can withstand a Champions League battering from the might of Bayern Munich.

After watching that, the United directors who still insist he is there for the long term will have to update their view as to whether he is the manager to entrust with all the millions they are planning to spend this summer.

But if not, who?

Mourinho? Could be, But mostly because he would be Fergie’s next preference. So would the punters be happy about that?

If not, is nothing in this country sacred any more?

Soon this year we will be commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War and honouring the enormous human sacrifice demanded of that generation of our young men. Some of the pathetic wimps who masquerade as our political leaders would rather we down-played that remembrance.

If Manchester United fans, simply because they are being asked to accept a season or two without gloating over their rivals, cannot respect Sir Alex Ferguson then they, too, should be ashamed of themselves.

Sympathy for Fellaini has been elbowed out after he whacked Zabaleta

It was just about possible to feel some sympathy for Marouane Fellaini as he strove to justify his huge transfer fee in a Manchester United team struggling to adjust to a drastic change of management.

Not any longer.

Not after his cynical protestation of innocence about his whacking of his elbow against the jaw of Pablo Zabaleta as United otherwise sank without trace against Manchester City.

If he had been putting as much effort into his game as he did in taking out his frustration on his opponent his new team might be closer to the business end of the Premier League.

If he lets his elbow fly like that in the World Cup in Brazil he will be sent off – and Belgium will rue the evening English referee Michael Oliver failed to teach him a red-card lesson.

—Daily Mail