Perfect? Just wide of the mark

“I’VE just been listening to a foaming-mouthed BBC reporter describe this past United month as “the perfect start”.

A classic case of that 21st century disease ‘kneejerkus hyperbolism’ if ever there was one, perhaps?

Yet the trouble is, I’m finding it hard to pick too many holes in that: short of a second goal in Lisbon, what more could we have wanted? Sunday was perhaps the most absurdly entertaining 90 minutes I have seen at Old Trafford since, oooh...the week before.

Picking out a highlight from Sunday’s cavalcade of thrills ‘n’ spills ought to begin and end with Nani’s wonder strike but the clip we’ve all had on a loop for days is, of course, Torres’ open goal howler.

Has he even managed to out-do the classics by Giggs, Forlorn, Quinn, Rosenthal et al for sheer jaw-dropping abysmalness?

One of my website colleagues had no doubts, rhapsodising: “The Torres miss had everything. The back story, the way the game was going, the timing of it, the significance it would have had if he’d scored it, and then the utter astonishment and disbelief that you’d seen what you’d seen. Other misses had some of those, but this was the complete package.”

Thus speaks a connoisseur. Fernando Torres, we salute you: you’ve made us so very happy.

Of course, the Spaniard did also manage to score an excellent goal, and appeared to demonstrate that Vidic is still afraid of him; moreover, the match provided some later pause for refection. It could, after all, easily have finished 8-5 — but for either side. “Overran in midfield but won the match from the wings,” summarised one colleague’s analysis, and therein lies the return of an old refrain — we probably still need that extra midfield star. As we now know, this was also the United management’s diagnosis before the season started, hence the lengthy pursuit of Sneijder. I The talk amongst some of the United players’ agents this week is that the club has discreetly restarted talks with the Dutchman’s camp, and that a January move is not to be ruled out — as we flagged up three weeks ago. But for the time being, we are content to hail the staggering product of the season’s six of the best so far, which I’d suggest means Jones, Smalling, Rooney, Young, Nani and Hernandez.

I can’t recall the last time you could look at a United side over a six-week period and point to six players consistently performing at the absolute peaks of their game simultaneously.

Nani probably deserves an extra mention here: his often unpleasant demeanour and past cheating have meant that he does not perhaps receive as many hosannas as he should. One fact-cruncher tellingly dug up the stat that “in his 100th United game, Nani has equalled his compatriot Ronaldo’s 19-goal tally set in his own first 100 games — but Nani has 33 assists to Ronaldo’s (mere) 12.” Admittedly there’s an age difference to throw in here, and no-one would suggest Nani will ever top Ronaldo in terms of worldwide recognition but, still, it’s a point well made: the “show pony” is also a results-delivering thoroughbred. Speaking of hardworking beasts, we’re at Stoke this weekend, where the application of intense workrate and organisational rigour has reached some kind of apotheosis, if you were to believe some critics.

No lesser a judge than Gary Neville, who truly knows his defence analysis onions, has proclaimed this week that their collective concentration when in defence mode is one of the greatest examples he’s ever seen. Though some might worry that it’s their airborne offence introducing itself to David De Gea that may prove to be the greater brow-furrower...

*Richard Kurt