Anyone weaned on the conflicting fortunes, high points and on occasions puzzling politics of Yeovil Town, learned long ago to take surprises – like, most recently, the cloaked departure of Russell Slade, in their stride.

Not that in this case, one understands, it was a complete surprise to those with an ear to the boardroom wall.

In the world of professional football when a manager moves on, less than half the story is usually told.

There are complicated financial clauses to sort out, and recriminations to be tactfully obscured amid the words of caution to both sides from the lawyers.

But the exit of Slade, a one-time schoolteacher with a determined if modest managerial record, has been recorded in the hushed tones of a sensitive security manoeuvre.

The words seemed, at least to the layman supporter, to be coded.

Had this been, we were left to wonder, a protracted and festering division between manager and board?

At what point, and on whose initiative, did the parting become official?

Yeovil Town was once the most famous non-League club in the country.

In its heroic and often frugal days, it also ran through managers with a bewildering rapidity.

When I was still a young schoolboy, the club was managed by a high-scoring Scottish centre forward, David Halliday, who had played for Manchester City, Sunderland, Arsenal and Clapton Orient.

One season he netted more goals than anyone in the old first division.

He was, however, too good to keep.

There was uproar and a great gnashing of teeth when a contingent of businessmen and football directors from Aberdeen arrived in the West Country and made it clear that they wanted him.

For Halliday, already thinking about career ambitions beyond Huish, Aberdeen appeared an irresistible appointment even though the Yeovil board, who did their business from an improvised timber structure on stilts, tried hard and unavailingly to persuade him to stay

Halliday, a soft-hearted man, was touched by the pleas from the terrace fans.

Eventually as a compromise, while accepting the flattering new-job offer, he agreed to stay with Yeovil until their Cup run was over.

He trained the team until they were knocked out by Manchester United 3-0 at Old Trafford.

At the time, Yeovil had a highly promising young winger, Charlie Smith who took on full backs and set up many of Halliday's goals.

The departing manager compounded the club's bitter disappointment by taking Smith with him to Aberdeen.

Hopeless at evaluating a player, the board let him go for £250.

Yet the furore hardly compared with what happened in 1990 when the ex-City winger, Clive Whitehead arrived unexpectedly at Huish to take over from one-time policeman and conscientious team boss Brian Hall.

The move was seen by some as a one man coup, set up by the club's late chairman, Gerry Lock, often a target of the fans' vitriol.

Criticism thundered on and Whitehead lasted in the role for only six months.

In the face of such opposition, it was never going to work.

Six years earlier, Ian Macfarlane's tenure in the manager's chair was even briefer.

He was a big, blunt Scot who had played more than 400 games for Bath City.

It was quickly evident that he would find limited rapport with the directors.

And off he went in a cloud of confusing dust

There have been many managers – and some departures, like that of Gerry Gow, never quite explained.

The list fluctuated from Steve Coles, who stayed for three months before going back to his job as an estate agent, to the glamorous maverick, Malcolm Allison, in the days when he puffed his cigars, adjusted his fedora and gave those unsophisticated Yeovil charges wiser advise than they would ever hear again.

Some managers, like Ron Saunders, were too ambitious to hang around in south Somerset.

Another, that civilised graduate and Scottish international George Patterson was probably more enraptured by a verse or two of Robbie Burns than 90 minutes of what then went on Saturday afternoons on a muddy, sloping pitch.

Yeovil Town remains, for the natives among us, an endearing club.

Just don't ask us to rationalise everything that goes on. It is possible, of course, that Russell Slade feels the same.