His record - two cups within six months of his appointment, a domestic treble in his first full season, a second title in 2005 and reaching the last 16 of the Champions League - set the context for a rueful but masterfully understated parting comment: "I'm sure those people who look at the facts will say that during a period of downsizing, I was reasonably successful".
Later he recognised the split had worked out reasonably well and that most Slovaks and Czechs were reasonably content," he said.
On the whole, recent trading statements have shown companies performing reasonably well, so a spate of more negative updates also dented investor enthusiasm.
He was not disappointed: "You have to go through that to be effective as a manager (you cannot reasonably ask anyone to do something you would not)." But he left when he was also placed on crew wages, "which was not enough for me to survive on at the time – which is why I left.
And they might reasonably ask: what about the parents – why aren't they teaching their children this stuff?
Chefs are using more fresh local produce and, with a little effort, it is still possible to find reasonably priced meals costing about €15 a head all over town.
"I can't reasonably expect this to happen without political involvement.
Mr Justice Lindblom said in a written judgment handed down on Wednesday that the Sun was right to publish the "kiss and tell" story because McClaren was a public figure "from whom the public could reasonably expect a higher standard of conduct".
Collective ministerial responsibility may have been absent, but they seemed to have muddled through reasonably well thus far.
I imagine this must cost a huge amount and that payments of fees, commissions and rebranding must quite reasonably come out of my minuscule bonus.
As Ken Albala, author of Pancake: A Global History, argues, you could reasonably define pancakes as any thin disc cooked from starchy batter on a flat surface.
