Was Stam's autobiography why Fergie let him go?

Excuse me?

Are we really regarded as so brainless and mesmerised by the glamour of the Premiership that all who work to promote its everlasting glory and wealth can simply spin us the gentlest of Stretford End off-breaks and expect to knock all three down?

Granted, Stam's form in the Charity Shield and in United's first Premiership match against Fulham was stumbling.

His removal from United's defence for the Premiership match against Blackburn was therefore explicable - if somewhat unexpected.

But then Stam was omitted again for Sunday's game at Aston Villa and that was the moment when acute United watchers might have guessed that his number was up.

To be left out once could have simply been a sharp reminder that no United player has a permanent entitlement to wear the shirt.

But to be left out again looked like a public declaration that Stam really was expendable.

Logic suggests that by then the club must have already been looking for a buyer and presumably also a replacement.

So don't tell me that the book didn't count.

Ferguson wasted little time in selling Stam

The allegation about Sir Alex's illegal approach, the suggestion that United's players had been instructed to dive in European games and the amusing - if somewhat unflattering - pen portraits of his team-mates were hardly an expression of blind loyalty to the club.

They'll surely have provoked the kind of Fergie outburst that Stam so vividly also described in the book.

A fury so great that Sir Alex was once dangerously close to causing Stam serious injury when he almost brought a dressing room table down on his defender's leg.

If the decision to sell Stam was about football alone, then why was Holland's international defender and former footballer of the year re-signed on a five-year contract only six months ago?

Has he really converted from major investment to Premiership duffer in such a short space of time?

Remember that famous phrase: "Form is temporary, class is permanent"?

I certainly bow to Sir Alex's superior judgement of a footballer but Jaap Stam - by most people's reckoning - has class.

Highly unprofessional

Perhaps the Old Trafford argument goes that he'd started to believe in his own invulnerability and that this had led to complacency and under-performance on the pitch?

Maybe, but much the same could have been said about Dwight Yorke, whose loss of form was altogether longer-lasting and caused by behaviour which might also be regarded as highly unprofessional.

Yorke, however, has been much more deeply indulged by Sir Alex and is still at Old Trafford - for the time being at least.

No, the content and tone of Stam's book will have been regarded as deeply challenging to Sir Alex's authority and to team morale.

I was incredulous when I read the Daily Mirror's serialisation and couldn't see how he could stay.

Deeply affronted

In fact, it almost looked like he was trying to give Sir Alex a reason to sack him, though all that Stam has said up to now suggests that's not the case.

So what we have is an outspoken footballer in the best tradition of Dutch internationals and a deeply affronted manager, who's had to move quickly - some might say hastily - to re-assert his authority.

The dressing room door will slam shut behind Stam as he goes, and Fergie will re-unite his squad behind the slogan "Jaap doesn't like us, we don't care!"

If this season is to produce Sir Alex's glorious swansong, then the dressing-room really must be united.