The Times' Nick Hume talks about his view from the North Stand
In an old episode of Star Trek, Captain Kirk discovers that the jackbooted but largely benevolent dictator of a faraway planet (a man whom Kirk once admired back on Earth) has been drugged and turned into a mouthpiece for his truly nasty deputy. On Planet United today, the more conspiracy-minded among my fellow season ticket-holders imagine that something similar must have happened with Sir Alex Ferguson and Carlos Queiroz.
While Ferguson lines up Queiroz as his anointed successor, it appears to some that he has retired already. According to Ryan Giggs's autobiography, Queiroz been given the responsibility to "train us, prepare us for games, organise the team and decide the things we need to work on". Since writing that, Giggs has curiously been left out of the team - further fuel for conspiracy theories. But we should be wary of making the engineer's oily rag the scapegoat.
Ferguson remains the manager and he is now the biggest part of the problem. The Stretford End can sing "Stand up if you love Fergie" if they want, but from where I sit in the North Stand, somebody needs to stand up and tell him: "Thanks for everything, but it is past time to go" - and to take his assistant with him. The fed-up contributors to fans' messageboards who describe them as a collective entity called Fergoz have probably got it right.
What we need now is not continuity and an easy succession, but revolution and a new Fergie-style dynasty. Back in Star Trek, both the dictator and his deputy were gone by the end of the episode. We might not have a Captain Kirk to sort everything out, but we have got Captain Keano. After exploring the football universe, maybe he will return to Planet United to build a new civilisation. In the meantime, we can hope only that the other-worldly talents of our young stars are not destroyed. Beam us up, Rooney.