Disjointed and non-United but it can win you trophies

ONE of my favourite regular correspondents amongst the readers of this column remarked to me after the Benfica victory last week that my “momentary excitement and delusions of reaching the final may well have been dampened by last night, no?!”

He was referring to the €200 bet I put on us to get to the final, in apparent contravention of all good sense and my own natural pessimism. Yet whilst it is true that the performance was grimly disjointed and, as Fergie himself admitted, somewhat ‘non-United’, such are the slightly shame-faced nights that win you trophies. After all, here we are, all but assured of qualification for the knockout stage — and simultaneously top of the league, despite several games in which we have been less than stellar, including what seemed like an epochal home defeat to Arsenal.

That Gunner Stunner had us all conjuring up the nightmares of 1998 and 2002 when Arsenal, by winning at Old Trafford, marked their temporary dominion over us, in both cases resulting in Arsenal titles. Suddenly all that seems forgotten and the identity of the two heroes of Sunday are significant.