Even without Pogba and Rashford, United suddenly look like a team eager to ‘get on with it’

Pogba and Marcus Rashford, they suddenly look like a team eager to “get on with it”, in Solskjaer’s telling phrase.

Over the summer, United felt they needed six players to arrest the drift towards mediocrity. A team still 37 points behind Liverpool, and who have lost eight of their 29 league games, would be unwise to start shouting too loudly about a rebirth. Yet something has changed with Fernandes arriving: not just in the authority of United’s play but how they see themselves, their jobs and the great corporate ocean liner that invited them aboard, only to float around on the seas.

On Sunday, United’s players should be glad they have Solskjaer and no longer work for Mourinho, who knows more about winning but less about the untameable spirit that drives special football clubs. It is all down to the players now. The younger ones, especially, will have to seek a point where they despise losing, would “not dream of letting this club down” (a favoured Ferguson phrase) and look to one another to continue this momentum or die trying.

Perhaps United will no longer switch it on and off as they fancy, mooching around the fringes of the Champions League places in a world of excuses: managerial churn, bad recruitment, the Pogba distraction, the Ed Woodward sideshow. This is the simple hope of United’s supporters. You would not bet your house on the players finally “getting it”, but a small wager now seems reasonable.