It is one of the simple pleasures of football to see the green shoots of recovery spring up beneath a good man and a good manager and lift him clear of the toxic hoots and lingering schadenfreude that had become the backdrop to his career. In the season just ended, recovery turned to triumph and carried David Moyes back to the place where he belongs.
For longer than his admirers would have wished, Moyes bore the aggressively bewildered look of a man besieged by adversity as his standing in the game slipped in the public mind following his short-lived reign as Manchester United boss.