Nice, but leave any cockiness to the cockerels

News-light Christmas week can be tough for newspapers, who often have to resort to all sorts of inessential fluff to fill up the columns.

Lists of factoids and stat-attacks can feature heavily, and whilst perusing one of those yesterday, I noted United have only ever lost once on a Premier League St Stephen’s Day, and also would be the first club to win 50 St Stephen’s Day games if they beat Newcastle. We hadn’t lost one at home since 1978 — a match I recall with a shudder — and Newcastle had only won once at Old Trafford in 40 years — one we can all recall with a shudder, as it happened just 12 months ago.

Somewhere in all that is a possible explanation for how extravagantly confident every Red I know was about seeing off the Geordies yesterday: the combination of venue, date and opponent bulged with the promise of an overstuffed Christmas stocking. The players looked every bit as pumped-up with self-belief too, their festive mood and all-round zeal evident from kick-off.