Eight wonders have us feeling a new dawn at Old Trafford

LAST week I wrote here, in full giddy-o-meter mode: ‘What if the Gunners are humiliatingly spiked by our bunch of kids on Sunday? I wasn’t the only putative Nostradamus foreseeing such climaxes, though.

Reds headed for Old Trafford on Sunday in a more ebulliently confident mood than for any United-Arsenal match I can recall — and I’m going back three decades there. Hacks in the press box were telling us, as they received the Arsenal team sheet, that they thought a good hiding was on the cards. Robbie Savage — the Sony Radio Personality of the Year, would you believe — was broadcasting that he felt the spirit of 2001 was in the air, the season we beat them 6-1.

And one of my oldest expert colleagues, a leading French literary critic and football writer, published the remarkable prediction that United would win by five clear goals.