"This is no time for a novice," thundered the hapless Gordon Brown in 2008, with his very uttering of those words appearing to guarantee that thenceforth, it would be time for a novice. It still is, I'm afraid. Experts are wholly out of vogue. In fact, when historians come to consider this lamely anti-establishment period in British cultural history, they may care to slap a slogan on it along the lines of "Cometh the amateur hour, cometh the man".

Then again, many living through it might counter, what have experts done for us lately? Banking experts brought global capitalism to the brink of Armageddon, governing experts have engendered the greatest contempt for the political class in modern history, and the man chosen by the experts' expert to manage Manchester United has been shown the door after piloting the club to its worst Premier League points tally. It doesn't feel a total coincidence that just as Ukip is topping the polls for May's European elections, there is apparently "growing support" for the untried Ryan Giggs being named Manchester United manager over such a football establishment figure as Louis van Gaal.

United's collapse in form has been spoken about so portentously this season that you'd think it were analogous to the collapse of trust in our most vital institutions, from the police to parliament, the media to banks. There is a much-discussed anti-establishment sentiment abroad, some of which has coalesced around pseudo-rebellious figures such as Nigel Farage, and some of which may encourage sections of fandom to imagine that a complete rookie is just the chap to pick up the pieces at United after the Moyes interregnum.

So then to Giggs – or Giggsy Wiggsy, as the prescient insta-nostalgia of Ron Manager always had it – who in the circumstances can be seen only as the Farage of the Premier League. And my apologies to Ryan for that.

But with the exception of the occupants of the average goldfish bowl, are there life forms more hard-wired for rosy-tinted short-termism than the sort of people who can watch a side of the combined cost of Manchester United beat a dire Norwich over an inoffensive 90 minutes at home and declare that the solution to United's problems is in situ? On reflection, that question feels unfair to goldfish. There are creatures swimming through small plastic castles every 15 seconds, and marvelling at their crenellations as if for the first time, who exhibit more worldly wisdom than such folk.

Surely United couldn't possibly backtrack and give Giggs the job? Listen, the previous prime minister actually wanted to make GMTV's Fiona Phillips a health minister in the Lords, while the current one got retail sublebrity Philip Green – reported cost of 60th birthday party: £6m – to pen a report on government profligacy. In a world of celebrity tsars, where even governments lack the confidence not to go casting around for well-known faces in historically misguided attempts to appease the electorate, it is not 100% beyond the realms.

Working on the principle that an immediate Giggs elevation is just too outlandish, however, even the sceptics must accept that it is perfectly possible for his mandatory presence at the club next season to put the kibosh on more experience-based appointments United may wish to make. Already, there are reports that a Van Gaal deal is sticking on the club's insistence on a role for Giggs, while people within the Giggs camp – have they even got the tent up yet? – appear to be briefing that he has a "strengthening belief" that he could be the right man for the job.

Still, never underestimate the importance of the suit round in the competition to assess managerial suitability. Like its evening-wear equivalent in the Miss World pageant, there is a strongly held perception that you just can't win the thing without it. Bearing this in mind, we should all be glad to add our voices to the chorus of experts whose analysis of Saturday's action from Old Trafford was effectively an observation that Giggs looked just right in his outfit choice.

Didn't he, though? Giggsy Wiggsy. Got it all, hasn't he? Lapels, buttons, pockets, sleeves, perfectly calibrated inside-leg measurement. Wears the club suit like it was made for him, isn't it? Probably is. And why not? Wonderful …

If you are one of those people who imagined that looking the part ceased to be a consideration in any sport with the publication of Moneyball more than 10 years ago, you are strongly urged to have a word with yourself.

Admittedly, Michael Lewis's bestseller showed how the Oakland Athletics baseball team's management had successfully overturned decades of intuitive scouting via their reliance on strange, newfangled things that would come to be known as "evidence" and "readily available statistics". Players were not signed on the basis of what some hopelessly romantic scout could imagine them doing in his mind's eye, or on the basis that they "looked like a ballplayer".

Unfortunately, the sheer volume of comments on Giggs already "looking like a manager" indicates that some Premier League observers lag behind this sabermetric revolution. It's hard to be sure that they're precisely the same people who still believe a bloody-bandaged Terry Butcher epitomises what a passionate, committed England footballer ought to look like, instead of the pampered mini-moguls who don't seem to fancy it these days. But you wouldn't rule it out.