LAST week I spoke of our hopes that Rooney would live up to his big-game reputation and break his drought, and when the Spud-Faced Nipper duly vindicated our trust in him just after 5pm on Sunday, you could have forgiven us all for mentally cracking open the champers.

I CAN’T remember who exactly first came up with the name “Theatre Of Dreams” for Old Trafford but one has to assume it was some kind of silly tabloid hack or cretinous PR git.

PITY poor pundit Alan Green, who hasn’t exactly been on a purple patch when it comes to his analysis of all things United recently.

IT’S apt to drag out the old bus route — you wait for two years for a Chelsea blip and then three or four come along all at once. Where was Terry’s bad back when it was needed back in April, eh?

IF FOOTBALL seasons are marked as much by their glorious moments as by trophies won, then we should still be remembering last Saturday warmly come the summer.

I’M on a hard-earned holiday this week, richly deserved of course, and the same applies to United, whose players can reflect on a week of almost pure joy.

THE Reds go marching on. United returned from the Riverside — scene of last season’s most humiliating low — with all three points, and in doing so extended the gap with Chelsea in our favour to its greatest since Mourinho turned up at Stamford Bridge.

SO much for the effects on Chelsea of their unscheduled alarm call in the early hours of Sunday morning; by half-five in the afternoon, their stamina and energy were in danger of making our puffing lads look as crimson and decrepit as our manager’s nose.

GOD, I hate Sheffield. Even for Yorkshire, Satan’s own county, it’s grim. A relative used to live there so I stayed often and I can assure you the people are as hideous as the architecture of the city itself.