Terrace Talk: Man United - What did we miss while we were away?

Welcome back, dear reader. Fixture list oblige, it’s been three weeks since this column last appeared — but hasn’t our enforced separation done us all some good, hey?

Last time we spoke, “our morale was in our socks”, as the French expression sweetly says.

This page was full of the misery induced by weeks of generally boring underperformance, and by particular moody individuals winding us up. (Yes, certain Frenchmen, we’re looking at you.)

Since then, at least one of those Frenchmen has finally pulled his socks up, and our morale with it. Martial’s unusual scoring streak has backboned a run of results that may not have been the result of overwhelmingly convincing performances but which have nonetheless set us up for the opportunities of this dawning spring.

Yes, the sound of waves of returning cranes has lifted this writer’s heart along with the temperatures, and it is time to be positive (though probably just for this week, mind).

Look at Bruno Fernandes, for example.

What a splendid impression he is creating; a proper pro who has instantly settled in with the minimum of fuss and already looks like the star of the team.

You can certainly tell he’s not had years of being coached by United’s staff anyway.

Then there’s this column’s darling, Mason Greenwood, scoring yet again to seal the game yesterday and almost making us forget for a few seconds that Woodward missed out on Haaland.

Miracle of miracles, even Luke Shaw has managed to look like a semi-competent professional at times.

Of course, the opposition hasn’t been up to much. Watford are terrible and FC Brugge bang average; then when faced with a half-decent side in Chelsea, we had to have the ref and VAR helpfully making it 13 versus 11. Still, grab your pleasures where you can. Three goals at Old Trafford and three on our travels constitute an excellent week’s entertainment in the context of a fairly grim season.

Pleasures have abounded off-field too. News that United have agreed to trial safe standing offers a potential climax to a quarter-century-long campaign.

It suddenly seems to have become universally accepted too, that Paul Pogba will be leaving, as this column forecast long ago, to general relieved delight.

And finally, although the full-on rejoicing must await final confirmation, we have revelled in Uefa’s humiliation of Manchester City.

Should the CAS uphold the judgment, it will go some way to mitigating the pain of the disaster that inevitably awaits us in May, when LFC finally return to their perch.

There’s no point inserting a hopeful “if” there anymore. Nothing is going to stop them — bar, say, some fantastical global virus emerging that wipes out all sporting fixtures and... ah hah!

God works in mysterious ways, to be sure. At least we’d know he’s a United fan.

What ought to be a formality against Brugge awaits at Old Trafford on Thursday, followed by a much more awkward assignment at Everton on Sunday. The Toffees aren’t far behind us in the table, and showed in their tight defeat at Arsenal last night that they have the ability to cause us trouble.

I suppose we should remember that battering relegation fodder at home is all very well but next Sunday’s is the sort of near-rival-eliminating contest United need to be winning outright if a Champions League place is to be claimed.

Yes, dear reader, this column is back — and ready to be miserable at the drop of a hat, or two points...