In their 29th Premier League game of a wretched season, Manchester United finally recorded their 10th victory.
It’s been a sorry tale of mistake and misadventure, with games against Leicester standing out as providing some of the few highs along the way. They’ve now won four games out of four against them in all competitions, two with Ruud van Nistelrooy in their own dugout, and two with him in Leicester’s.
This was a result that also means precisely half of United’s Premier League wins this season have come against the drifting, doomed not-yet-mathematically-relegated-but-basically-relegated trio.
Leicester put up little resistance here, unable to seriously threaten the United goal with any real conviction until a baffling yet concerted effort in the last couple of minutes after going 3-0 down, by which point it was all just a little bit late really.
It is, in a way, almost a relief for Leicester that relegation is now an effective certainty after their recent tale of woe extended to 13 defeats in 14 Premier League games (no prizes whatsoever for identifying the opposition for the exception) and a record seven consecutive home defeats in the competition without scoring a single goal.
If they were a club still possessed by the cruelty of hope – which really could have happened had Wolves not very slightly and belatedly pulled their finger out in recent weeks – they might now be agonising over the nightmarish run-in that awaits them rather than simply lying back and waiting for the sweet release of death.
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly. Shakespeare might not have had Premier League relegation battles in mind when writing Macbeth, but he was absolutely on to something there. Not for Leicester or Ipswich or Southampton the agony of a last-day heartbreaker. Not for them the cruel bitterness of hope.
Leicester can now view a fixture list in which their remaining games comprise solely European challengers and games against their fellow stricken clubs that on another timeline might have been considered vital six-pointers not with trepidation or fear but with the resigned yet carefree shrug of the condemned.
It’s over, it matters not. There’s a sense of relief and release to that, at least.
Ruben Amorim has boldly declared that not even winning the Europa League can save United’s season, and despite everything it is for this kind of oratory that we still find ourselves liking the cut of his jib. What’s beyond doubt is that nothing can save United’s league season, one in which the biggest prize now on offer is avoiding the ignominy of finishing below even Spurs.
They may still fail in that, with no more games to come against the only sorts of teams United have been reliably capable of dispatching this season.
But there were enough reasons to enjoy this effort when post-Europa League weariness might have been a concern. There was no rest for the undroppable and irreplaceable Bruno Fernandes, who chipped in with two assists – we think, the second was disputed – and a cherry-on-top goal to cement his status as United’s man for all occasions.
There were goals too for Rasmus Hojlund and Alejandro Garnacho on what was plainly a good day for the ending of droughts.
We still have grave doubts about United when faced with even the most basic levels of competence, but they have been pretty reliable against the division’s very ropiest teams and three points is still three points when all’s said and done.
And welcome points they remain given that apart from Man City all United’s remaining games are against precisely the sort of teams that routinely have their number at this time. Your Forests, your Newcastles, your Bournemouths. The Brentfords of this world. Coherent teams. Organised teams. Unridiculous teams.
Maybe one day Amorim will steer United back to that kind of level. But it won’t be this season and nothing that happens to them in the remainder of this league season can really change that. It’s all just a bunch of stuff that happened.
