Offices and cafes were buzzing with conversation yesterday but it wasn’t local politics or international disasters that had people talking.

Instead, the news on everybody’s mind was the abrupt departure of Manchester United manager David Moyes.

The best-supported club on the island yesterday ended its turbulent relationship with the unsuccessful Scot after 10 months at the helm.

He had signed a six-year contract last July. Manchester United Supporters’ Club vice president Joe Catania described the overall feeling as “a needed relief”.

“The general reaction has been ‘pheew’. I mean this club we’ve seen recently has not been the club we know and love,” he said.

The unfruitful Mr Moyes produced the worst ever Manchester United performance in Premier League history.

In seventh place with four games to go, this will be the first time the team finishes below the top three since the top flight league was formed back in 1992.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the decision to axe Mr Moyes was well received by local fans.

“Thank God! After last week’s embarrassment against Everton I had almost given up,” bar owner Steven Pisani said.

His St Paul’s Bay bar is clad in Manchester United paraphernalia. A self-confessed “worshiper of the red devil”, Mr Pisani said he could barely face opening his bar in recent weeks.

“The feeling of watching a team you love lose is unbearable. Now at least I have hope,” he said.

A Facebook group of more than 10,000 Maltese fans was yesterday flush with comments and memes hailing the decision to sack “the chosen one”.

Writing under a computer generated image of Mr Moyes hiding a sack of league points in a garden shed, fan Matthew Meampel said: “To me United has always been a way of life. I have always stayed in on the weekends and missed important occasions to watch them. Lately, I’ve been thinking ‘what’s the point’. It’s like I lost a best friend.”

The poor performance and dwindling support has been evident at the supporters’ club. The 10 months of Premier League matches normally see the Msida hall transformed into an extension of the hallowed Theatre of Dreams.

But the atmosphere changed over the past season. “For the first time in a long time the support wasn’t there. People stop coming to watch the team when they don’t perform. It was like the players weren’t playing,” he said.

He urged local supporters to believe in the club: it would bounce back.