'The eleventh Southampton manager to occupy the visiting team’s dugout since Ferguson — who knows what it is like to be one game from the bullet — took charge at United, Wigley did himself no favours here. Plan A — two full backs at full back, two more full backs on the wings, two holding players in central midfield and two Hail Marys at kick-off — worked perfectly for 53 minutes, the time it took for United to score. Plan B? there was no plan B, unless it was a particularly cunning plan that involved doing absolutely nothing different at all: no substitutions, either tactical or inspirational, until it was all but over, no obvious orders to attack, no conviction and, inevitably, no points. There have been many tame surrenders at Old Trafford and certainly some bigger home wins, but perhaps few performances as supine as this one.
It made it difficult to gauge the real extent of the United revival, though clearly momentum is with them. Gary Neville summed it up as well as anyone. "Defensively we haven’t really had a problem this season and keeping it solid at the back means we can attack in numbers," he said. "It has just been a case of being more ruthless in front of goal. Today we could have won 6-0 and that is the sort of scoreline that sends messages to the rest of the Premiership to make people say, ‘hang on, Man United are flying’."
Even Roy Keane, United’s notoriously hard-to-please captain, was impressed up to a point. "The fans coming here are a lot more optimistic these days and with the young lads having had a good win in midweek (the Carling Cup quarter-final victory against Arsenal) things are looking pretty decent," he said.
It has taken United some time to reach take-off speed. When they kicked off against Norwich City 15 weeks ago, they were bottom of the table and a club apparently in crisis. Some crisis: seven successive wins in all competitions, one defeat in 24, already through to the European Cup knockout stage and semi-finalists in the Carling Cup. Wigley, for one, would die for a crisis like that. José Mourinho, too, would be unwise to write United off, albeit that Ferguson concedes that closing a nine-point gap to the leaders represents a "mammoth task".
So the force is with United? "There’s no doubt about it, you can smell it in the dressing-room," Ferguson said, and you got the impression that he would consider a ninth Premiership title his greatest triumph yet. Indeed, they are one point ahead of the pace that they set when they last won the league. Can they do it? "Playing like that, I think they can do anything they want to do," Wigley said.'