'United were never fluent in beating Villa last night, but they never had to be, despite spurning a number of chances to make the game safe after Ryan Giggs scored shortly before half-time.
Running from deep as of old, the Welshman was a constant threat and could - perhaps should - have had a hat-trick. No doubt the fact he is in the middle of contract negotiations is a coincidence, but Ferguson paid him generous tribute, which was rather more convincing than his suggestion that the match had been United's "hardest away game of the season so far".
With a run of nine games without defeat, compiled without any great style but efficiently and ominously, United rise above Everton into third place.
It has been nearly 10 years since Villa beat United in the league, and they struggled to match the visitors' pace and awareness from the first minute, when their young centre-back Liam Ridgewell gave Wayne Rooney the time and space to get behind him and shoot, fortunately for Villa from an angle that made it a straightforward save for Thomas Sorensen.
Otherwise the combustible one spent much of his time in search of a role, as he and Giggs repeatedly swapped wings. But Giggs was having no such identity crisis, and twice came close to opening the scoring in the first 20 minutes.
His first effort, deflected over the bar by the outstretched foot of Ulises de la Cruz, might anyway have been saved by Sorensen, but he should have given the Dane no chance with the second, a drive from well inside the area after Gareth Barry slipped.
He got it right at the third time of asking. Villa had almost pinched a goal in unlikely fashion, when Ridgewell headed against Roy Carroll's knees after the goalkeeper threw a clearance against the back of Carlton Cole's head, before Giggs was brilliantly played into space by John O'Shea and found the target with a right-foot shot from the edge of the area.
The contrast between United's direct and incisive - if not always precise - use of possession and Villa's dithering, especially when they approached the final third of the field, must have been painful to Villa's manager David O'Leary.'