Terrace Talk: Man United: A painful loss but still plenty to be upbeat about

Ah well. I did take care to insert a giddy-warning in last week’s column, and it turned out to be well-founded. United’s unexpected spring offensive duly found out that Stamford was indeed A Bridge Too Far.

To be honest, we’d already dialled down expectations once we’d realised, on the eve of the game, that we’d likely be seeing Rooney in midfield and poor Falcao back upfront, adding to the woe of a missing Carrick. If you’ve watched much of United this season, you’ll have appreciated that this represented an unholy trinity of misfortune, and we reaped what felt like the inevitable result once Hazard had scored.

Yet rarely has a defeat in a so-called Big Game been received with such equanimity by Reds. Bright sides and silver linings were being spied everywhere, with the season-best display of Luke Shaw being prominent amongst them.

No-one would argue that a draw would have been unfair onChelsea, and seeing Mourinho having to resort to some mirthless bus-parking against what was an understrength United heartened us all.

It can’t be said often enough: six weeks ago, no-one would have suggested we could have lived with the champions-elect, even at full strength. Now we come away from London rolling our sleeves up and thinking “we can take this lot next season”.

Most of us would prefer, on the evidence of Saturday, that Messrs Januzaj, Di Maria and Falcao not be invited to share that adventure, and the weekend papers have been full of speculation as to how Van Gaal might complete his rebuilding.

As I recently revealed in this column, Ed Woodward is already prepping his chequebook for some serious hammering, and I hear that United suits have even been letting it slip to private interlocutors that three summer deals are already in place.

Whether one of these will be a goalkeeper to replace De Gea remains a burning question, and the smoke signals emanating from it remain chiefly of one shade: dark. Spanish TV channels are already declaring him to be Madrid-bound, and one of his Spanish teammates told a pal of mine just this week that he “expects” the boy to leave.

However, there are United staff privately insisting that nothing is actually done and dusted yet; and even his agent, amongst whose entourage I have a snout, has not yet claimed the jig is up in a definitive manner. Nevertheless, it’s obvious what Senor Mendes would prefer — hence the betting is still largely one-way.

Personally, I always assume a fit young chap will have ‘cherchez les femmes’ at the forefront of his cerebral cortex, and it’ll come down to this: leaving such a cracker as his other half alone in another country for yet another season would be asking for trouble.

Never mind what Madrid might be offering to pay him: in my opinion, it won’t be what could be in his pocket that’ll sway him, but what’s in his pants.

(By the by: speaking of what’s in a player’s pants, I urge you to seek out the photograph of Falcao taken this week, wearing tracksuit bottoms. As you’ll see, there’s really no need to feel sorry for him).

Slightly chastened, and yet also strangely fortified, we head off to Murkeydive at the weekend, and one of the few remaining old-skool proletarian cauldrons left in this increasingly antiseptic division. The cocksure fixture-fondlers who like to look ahead and allocate ‘points expectations’ will have decreed that we are now on a relatively easy run — bar Arsenal — until the end of the season.

Ha. I remember such predictions when we went to Goodison twenty springs ago: instead, the Kanchelskis Crisis blew up, and the wheels started coming off that great first Double team. In football as in life: never drop your guard when approaching the city of the damned...”

Six weeks ago no-one would have suggested we could have lived with the champions-elect... now we came away from London thinking ‘we can take this lot next season’.