Sir Alex Ferguson shook his head with familiar incredulity as he pondered the latest twist in the Newcastle United soap opera: Sam Allardyce sacked as Harry Redknapp weighs up whether to become the club’s fourth new manager in little more than three years. “It is a strange club,” the Manchester United manager said.

Ferguson touched on some of the myths surrounding Newcastle — notably a tradition of cavalier football founded on a purple patch in the mid-1990s — and ventured that Allardyce had been prejudged on his arrival from Bolton Wanderers.

He also suggested that Mike Ashley, the Newcastle owner, had been taking advice from “non-football people” and painted the picture of a club unmanageable in every sense.

So would Ferguson advise the Portsmouth manager against taking the job? “I think Harry is intelligent enough to know what he is doing,” Ferguson said. “But it will be a difficult choice for him. He has a wonderful set-up at Portsmouth, a lovely house on the coast, his wife is settled there.

“But we’re all vain enough to think we can do things. Harry would have been disappointed he didn’t get the England job. Maybe he’ll feel the time is right to take this one.”