Sounds like the decision was made in February (after Olympiakos-gate) and the board have just been waiting until CL qualification was mathematically impossible so it would activate a clause in his contract. Performance-related contracts are common for big clubs so I'm inclined to believe this theory. February is also around the time I thought was the latest they could wait to give him the chop and give themselves enough time to salvage the season.

It's been an absolute catastrophe. I'm struggling to think of a change in management at a top club that has gone south in such a major way so quickly. I disagree with BoB and Bubba in that I thought from the beginning that it was an underwhelming appointment (considering the big-name managerial movements that were being made last summer) and I still think he could have been there for the next five years and never won the league; maybe finish third or fourth after a good season.

What I really hope is that this will prompt the many United fans who have been fed on a steady diet of believing their own bulltrout over the past years to actually get real and realise that there is nothing special about Manchester United then drop the 'We're United, we're different, we don't sack managers, connntinnuuuuuuiitttyyyy' rubbish. Sam Wallace in the Independent summed it up for me this morning:

Other than a bumpy ride around the late 1980s, this is a club that had convinced itself that sacking managers was something other people did, while they tutted and nodded sagely in the direction of their much-vaunted, seldom-replicated “continuity”.

As of the recent decision not to stand by David Moyes through a series of results that have gone from the bad to the disastrous, it turns out that, contrary to what you might have been told, United are just like all the others. There is no magical quality that insulates them against the possibility of managerial failure, and when push comes to shove they have no solution other than the one everyone else resorts to in the end.
I think that is actually the main reason so many non-united fans have been enjoying their fall from grace. It's imperative that the board don't piss about this time, and get hold of someone who has experience working at big European teams, winning trophies, and has a thick book of contacts that extend beyond the Goodison Park staff phonebook.

Paddypower offering Moyes next Celtic manager at 25/1. Definitely worth a couple of quid for me.