What can we learn from Moyes? Nothing

It's only fitting that Cantillon pays homage to the incredible media slice-and-dice of the story on the dismissal of David Moyes. There's isn't a sentient being in the western world who hasn't heard the news by this stage. One suspects that on the barricades of Slovyansk in the Ukraine, Moyes's name has been mentioned once or twice.

Of course, the story has sent "management experts" into a state of analogy ecstasy. Forbes ran a feature on 10 Leadership Lessons from the Hiring and Firing of David Moyes . Every management guru worth his or her salt is putting the finishing touches to a PowerPoint presentation on Moyes and Man United.

It seems that if you study business, work in a business or ever did business with a business, then there are lessons you can learn from this sporting saga.

The truth of course is that the world of Premier League football managers has as much in common with the daily drudge of working life as Formula One has with your morning commute.

Even comparisons with major corporate bosses are wide of the mark. The chief executive of a big plc has to put up with scrutiny on business pages such as these, and in the most high-profile cases the odd splash on the society pages. At the height of the banking crisis, executives in the spotlight had to be wary of the odd rotten egg. In the upper echelons of the football world, however, being on the receiving end of verbal bile is part of the job.

Aside perhaps from Apple's Tim Cook or Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, few business leaders carry out their weekly chores in the full glare of the public eye, often with verbal abuse being roared at them from 10ft behind.*

Even in the privacy of the dressing room, the sort of “talent” they have to manage is a world apart from the stroppy employee most managers might have to cajole into action.

The reason Moyes represents such an easy management metaphor is because anyone with even a passing interest in football has at some stage shouted at the TV and offered up their tuppence-worth on team strategy or player positioning.

The average pub bore wouldn't dream of suggesting he could run Apple or Accenture, but the same bloke is absolutely certain he could walk into Old Trafford and restore the club to its former glory.

Enjoy the drama, analyse United's options, moan about Moyes, but don't waste your time looking for trite management lessons to apply in the working world the rest of us inhabit. To paraphrase the great Bill Shankly, football is not simply a matter of life and death, it is much, much more important than that. The same cannot be said of management.

*This article was edited on April 24th 2014 to correct an error