TERRACE TALK: Manchester United - Time to restart the choir: United are back, woah-oh

Gasp! I’m writing this ten minutes after the final whistle and I can barely type. Not, for once, because I’ve been overdoing the sauce, but because my entire being seems to be buzzing uncontrollably.

What a feast to put before the city, the nation and the world; and what a way to satisfy an appetite that we had been manically stoking all week long.

Make no mistake — and I swear to you this is not the hindsight talking — we Reds had been hungering to devour this one more than any derby in recent years.

You could feel the confidence everywhere, in the fans and in the players, the latter seeming to struggle in pre-match interviews to keep their ebullience in check.

We all knew we’d seen our team finally ‘click’; we could all see that City have been sinking for weeks; we could all smell the victory waiting for us around the corner.

Even so, no one could have expected such a ludicrously entertaining and exhilarating afternoon that — dare I say it? — had the whiff of A Historic Moment about it.

Yes, yes, there was the odd offside knocking about and yes, we wouldn’t like to think about how events might have unfolded had we not equalised their opener as rapidly as we did.

But let’s not nitpick. Step back and bask in the glow of the overall effect.

As one of my colleagues rightly murmured, in dazed tones: “That was more of a ‘Manchester United performance’ than anything Fergie served up during his last few years.”

The temptation to bellow, Seventies-style, ‘United are back, woah-oh!’ is overwhelming. So why resist?

There’s something emblematic of the recent transformation in the identities of the heroes of the day. Look at the scorers list: Mata, Smalling, Young, Fellaini — all players who either not so long ago had been written off by fans, or had appeared to be on LvG’s ‘unfavoured’ list.

The man of the match, our collective man-crush Ander Herrera, is the ultimate example, finally receiving his bouquets by the tens of thousands after those autumnal concerns that his face was never going to fit LvG’s philosophy.

And conversely, who would ever have thought, back in August, that we would have started a match of such importance by leaving supposed Big Match greats Di Maria and Falcao on the bench?

Even our much-lambasted defence — which, one must admit, produced its usual three or four tremors — still ended up seeming to be in far better shape than our opposition’s comedy troupe, which only 12 months ago was being heralded across the country as City lifted the title.

Now we rub our hands in the purest of glee at the vista opening up for Manchester.

At United, we have the prospect of Champions League assurance, with all that that entails for the retention and attraction of players, and a summer of high spending as apparently promised by Ed Woodward.

City, meanwhile, now face one of their classic summer meltdowns, probably producing another managerial upheaval, a stampede to the exit doors by unhappy players — and all to be handled whilst under the onerous constraints of Financial Fair Play too.

Whither your oil money now, Abu Dhabi Bitters? Not much use to you when you can’t spend it, is it?!

Chelsea are coming up, and the giddier among us may believe that this wave of confidence and sheer enjoyment in playing could yet power The Shirts on to causing the Londoners some real damage.

I don’t know whether I’d dare go that far — like most Reds, I’ve assumed they are nailed-on for the title since about September — but the mere fact that we can imagine it makes you want to hug yourself.

Six weeks ago, had you floated the suggestion, you may indeed have been hugging yourself — but only inside a straitjacket.

Now? Now we can sing the old 1980s classic ‘Let’s Go F***** Mental!’ without being taken literally...