TERRACE TALK: Man United - Wayne Rooney scuttling Liverpool would crown it all

Let’s get the formalities out of the way first. Mouthy BBC pundit Ian Wright has sternly told us that anyone not worshipping at the altar of Wayne Rooney this past weekend is “disgraceful”.

Presumably not wanting to be the subject of his fatwa, you and I should doff our caps and acknowledge that reaching Sir Bobby’s record is a notable achievement, albeit one we’d begun to think Rooney would never manage, as he painfully laboured his way through 2016.

Some Reds, “disgracefully”, appeared not to have got the memo, as one comrade reported after the match: “amongst the old timers in the North Stand, there was barely a ripple of applause when Rooney scored. Once they’d all sat down (it takes some of them a while) a lone voice rang out, to sniggers: “right — now China’s that way ...”

But let us not be so churlish. The moment Wayne comically kneed home his 249th qualifies as ‘historic’, and one would like to have been a fly buzzing around Charlton’s mouth when the ball crossed the line. If there was ever a moment when Saint Robert would have been forgiven for letting slip a mild whispered expletive, that was surely it.

Presumably, we will have to go through all this hoopla again if and when Rooney finally breaks the record, although one might legitimately wonder if he can expect to get on the pitch again for a while. Mourinho has already signalled Pogba and Zlatan will be back tomorrow night, and we’ve long since established that Wayne is no longer considered to be part of an ideal United starting XI. There would, of course, be something to be savoured in Rooney breaking the record against Liverpool on Sunday, should he come on from the bench where one expects him to start.

One thing that undoubtedly helped bind Reds to Rooney over the years was the shared desperation to beat LFC at every given opportunity. In an era dominated by foreign players who cannot be expected to feel the same way as we do about Liverpool, it was good to know there was at least one player on the pitch whose blood would be racing as angrily as ours in those fixtures.

It is hard to think of anything but next Sunday, especially given the league table and the fact that this will be the first top rank test of the new rejuvenated ‘Winter United’. But tomorrow night, Wembley beckons — and, in all probability, a subsequent final against Sunday’s opponents.

Hull are not a good team, are in the relegation zone, and have just sacked their manager; one has to admit that this is as close to having something put on a plate, seasoned, and cut up into bitey sizes as you can expect at this stage. Not forgetting the fact that we have a second leg available to put any first leg errors right. (Have I tempted fate enough there?)

Back in August, the consensus of conventional wisdom was that Jose’s best chances to make his mark this season lay in the Cups — so far, so good, of course.

But scratch the surface of the more excitable Reds, and you do detect glimmers of hope that United may yet seriously challenge for the title.

Examined on paper, these claims still seem fairly ludicrous to most, but they do tell us one important thing; that there is now a confidence and belief amongst fans in Mourinho that Moyes and LVG never came close to acquiring, even at their best moments.

Certainly, I have observed various severe José critics in the Red stands increasingly piping down as the winter progressed, often accompanied by their quiet admissions that they are enjoying what they are watching more than anything they have seen at Old Trafford since circa 2011.

All of which makes the visit of Liverpool on Sunday feel even more potentially decisive. One has the excited sense that something could finally crystallise for us on Sunday; equally, there lingers the dread fear that every illusion could shatter around us. Days like Sunday offer the promise of epochs being separated and defined. And days like Sunday are what men like Mourinho live for...