People travelled for that. People got on planes, decanted liquids into 100ml bottles, queued at passport control, booked taxis and hotels, set the alarm for 4.30am, counted down the days, for that. People braved Northern trains and Avanti West Coast, negotiated the closure of the M67, for that.
And so the first thing you really have to say is: fair play, those people. It was Ed Woodward seven years ago who most strongly articulated the vision of the modern Manchester United, a world in which “playing performance doesn’t really have a meaningful impact on what we can do on the commercial side”.
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Here, a capacity crowd clad in megastore tat sat in front of rolling advertising boards, testing that theory to destruction. Even the VAR must have changed channels. Still, an encouraging display in front of a full house. A local derby, a global television audience, no goal bonuses to pay out. For the Glazers and Ineos, this has to be as close to perfect as days get.
The second thing you have to say is that United were actually quite good. Not in terms of the individual quality of their footballers. The individual footballers remain bad. But they created more, shot more, hassled more, wanted it more. As for Ruben Amorim, Mason Mount for Manuel Ugarte was a substitution designed to open the game up, not shut it down. In any case, this did not look like a team four points behind Brentford.
And yes, this is a weirdly misshapen City, short of a champion striker and a world‑beating midfielder, and happy to give you space in behind them. Performances like these are not really scalable. Lyon on Thursday will happily sit 10 men and one Nemanja Matic behind the ball and let United stew in their own neuroses.
But there genuinely appears to be something good gestating here, as long as you were prepared to let the eyes glaze over a little, to ignore the missed chances and general sense of palsy in the final third. As long as you were prepared to extrapolate, to imagine what this team may look like with a full pre-season, confidence and coherence, different players, better players.
There are no blueprints or architects’ drawings for this part of the plan. It takes genuine vision to imagine a midfield in which Ugarte does not simply let a pass run under his foot, an attack in which Rasmus Højlund is slamming away chance after chance instead of running in wild directions like a man trying to escape a wasp, to imagine a defence finally freed from the influence of Victor Lindelöf.
But clearly Amorim can. So too can Bruno Fernandes, trying and largely failing to extract the required standards of execution from his teammates: instructing Alejandro Garnacho to release the pass earlier, berating Patrick Dorgu for straying offside when he had the whole line to look across. On the touchline, Amorim applauded encouragingly, the applause you give your hungover flatmate when he finally manages to drag himself out of bed at 1pm.
Afterwards it was interesting to hear Amorim speaking about the missing “feeling” from the game, the absence of jeopardy, the triumph of doubt. This is not simply a matter of tweaking connections and drilling positional instructions. What Amorim seems to be saying is that the primary obstacle here is mental. That the United he envisages must never be content with a point at home.
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At which point the United of Amorim’s imagination collides head-first with United Ltd: a world of cold business certainties and cold meat platters, the fat margins of Big Leisure, where a point at home is absolutely fine. Lunch is served at 2.30pm. Coffee and petit fours at half-time. Please scan the provided QR code for your matchday programme.
What do you think happens to the noise levels when you try to remove junior concessions? What happens to the atmosphere when you remove longstanding season-ticket holders from their seats behind the dugout to make way for a new VIP hospitality area? The irony here is that the very people Amorim needs to ignite his movement are the same people his bosses are slowly trying to squeeze out of Old Trafford.
At full time, thousands of United fans stayed to protest owners new and old. They chanted slogans against the Glazers. They wielded banners reading “we want our club back” and “RIP fan culture 1878-2025”. As they did so, a hospitality guest in designer jeans, a pristine United jersey and a half-and-half scarf stood in front of them and carefully lined up a selfie.
On the stadium sound system, an announcer was inviting fans to visit the club website to access exclusive features and content. By now the players had disappeared down the tunnel and the stadium was slowly emptying. Manchester United thanks you for your business. Please visit again.
