TERRACE TALK: Man United - Bumbling Louis van Gaal takes giant leap backwards

Cue jaunty ’70s Americana theme tune. Previously, on last week’s episode of Soap: “Derby, Stoke, and Chelsea are all either poor sides or in poor form, so we shouldn’t get carried away... we just don’t want to see any trace of the ancien régime again.”

Ha! So much for that briefest interregnum. We feel like Henry VI’s Lancastrians witnessing the prompt return of the Yorkist Edward IV to power. The ancien regime’s back, and it’s even more hope-sappingly brutal than ever.

The second half at Sunderland was quite a thing to have to swallow, wrapping up everything we had come to loath about this season in one handy 45-minute fajita of farce. As I write, on so-called Super Sunday, the contrast with Shite Saturday is painful. The TV screen flickers with the exertions of genuine title contenders, while the sad memory lingers of our own sorry shower, apparently condemned in the words of both our manger and captain to hoping for the best in the Europa League.