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.

Rooney, in particular, resembled a child trying out his best new present for the first time, zooming about with the purposeful glee of a boy on a new Chopper. (I’m trusting that’s as spot-on a reference as it was in 1975, kidz.) Hark at Falcao as well, the sort of ‘foreign flair player’ whom the old sweats might have suspected of being prone to midwinter shrivelling, but who throbbed thrillingly in the Manchester chill. It’s an obvious open goal but, boy, what a contrast with the 0-1 defeat Moyes suffered against Pardew a year ago. The scorer that day was Cabaye, who twice came close to being the subject of a United bid during 2013/14.

Instead, he went to Paris, where he has largely disappointed, whilst we eventually ended up with Di Maria instead, for whom PSG couldn’t quite get the required package together last summer. Twelve months passed and that couple of illustrative what-might-have-beens in the interim, and now here we are, finally able to face fixtures like this with at least some of that cockiness to which we had become so accustomed under Fergie.

Once the third goal went in, the match was clearly over, ready for its classic post-turkey slump in the armchair; frankly, most of us knew it was won even at 2-0.

That said, it’s only fair we pause to give Rooney some proper credit for a very good early winter run, during which he has started to convince some doubters the captaincy may end up being his redemption. A lot of Reds outside Manchester don’t grasp that Rooney being made skipper by Van Gaal really did stick in a lot of local craws, for reasons both essential (Scouseness) and existential (his 2010 revolt). But those critics have been forced to dry-store their powder since September, and his revelling in leadership on Friday was obvious to all.

Best of all? The relief for us Mataphiles as Juan took advantage of the propitious situation to cast aside his recent inhibition and display some proper Number 10-ness. Furthermore, we’ve seen that, at least in the formation adopted yesterday, Rooney, Mata, RVP and Falcao can all play together, and to mutual advantage — which some observers had doubted.

Sunday will require sterner stuff, admittedly. Spurs away has caught us out a few times down the years, and they are clearly a classier outfit than Newcastle, with a rather canny coach who will fancy he can take LvG on in a more tactical battle. No-one likes an awayday noon kick-off either. Dial this down — on Sunday, we should leave any cockiness to the cockerels.”