And then a football match broke out . . .

RARELY, if ever, has a game between the recent big two of English football been so overshadowed by events off the pitch.

A good two hours before kick-off yesterday, and before the tram for Old Trafford had even pulled out of Picadilly Gardens, the red contingent on board were already giving a new twist to that awful old 70s hit so beloved of football fans, gleefully chirping: “Where’s Mourinho gone, where’s Mourinho gone, far, far away.”

Once the multitudes got hold of it inside the ground, the schadenfreude was only deafening. Perhaps the only consolation for Roman Abramovich and Peter Kenyon was that the first game of the post-Mourinho era was in Manchester and not west London, where the noise might have been just as loud, but a whole lot angrier.