TERRACE TALK: Man United - Zlatan is the only player who did himself justice

So much for ‘Alan Hardaker’s ginger stepson’, as I used to dub the unloved League Cup. Unloved by United, anyway. After yesterday’s gripping final, could we finally be said to be warming to this weird tri-handled pot?

It’s taken us more than three decades of final appearances, but we’ve finally reached the stage where we’ve won more than we’ve lost - five to four - for starters. After losing the 2003 final to a team whose name escapes me, we had been looking glumly at a record of one win in five; it wasn’t quite a curse, but it always felt like our ‘unlucky’ competition.

Times change, and there’s no doubt as to where almost all the luck lay yesterday. True, there was a possible Saints red card we could have furiously moaned about had we lost. But otherwise, it was Southampton’s turn to feel justifiably a little hard done by. So summoning up the spirit of 1976, when the boot was firmly on the other (offside) foot, all one can say to them is this: hardy-harr-harr, and a nurr-nurr-nurr. (Well, I was only nine at the time.) Most of the grovelling gratitude goes to Zlatan, of course, and it’s hard to think of another United player who came anywhere near to doing himself justice. Watching Saints balls repeatedly and alarmingly flash across the United goal made one wonder how this team could possibly have racked up such good defensive statistics these past few months.