James Lawton in the Independent:
‘The idea that somehow Manchester United ambushed their critics along with Chelsea at Old Trafford on Sunday is something Sir Alex Ferguson's language of protest should engulf, dissect, and dispatch as quickly as he once sent a football boot flying at the brow of a David Beckham he perceived to be underachieving. It is, after all, something we might describe as, let's say in the circumstances, total baloney.
‘United, if they knew it or not, were confirming every last muttering of rage that players who had received so much could give so little over the course of two full seasons.
‘When they had to, when their professional reputations were on the floor; when they had become bywords for the neglect of standards which should be taken for granted in players living so high on the scale of football's rewards; when they were threatening to reduce to ashes the work of one of the great managers, a man who had backed them to the very edge of his credibility; they took on and, whatever the revisionist quibblings of Jose Mourinho, beat the most richly endowed football club on earth.
‘Now when they next go out to do their professional duty - at Charlton Athletic later this month - Ferguson can ask with huge moral force the question which is presented to every seriously rewarded professional in any walk of life: what are you going to do for me today?
‘Are you going to make a nonsense of your station - and your talent - as you did against Middlesbrough, beaten by Everton at the weekend after looking like the wonder team of Europe eight days earlier when ripping apart Rio Ferdinand's version of high-quality defence, and then against the profoundly mediocre Lille in Paris? Or are you going to do something for which you receive what most other occupants of the planet would consider astonishingly generous reward? Are you going to play as though it vaguely matters?
‘Whatever you thought of Roy Keane's diatribe, however much you believed it flowed from personal frustration and a sourness of spirit inexplicable in a man who has drawn from the game quite as much as he has contributed - which is rather a lot - the substance of his complaint was reinforced rather than demolished as Chelsea's unbeaten Premiership run suffered the same fate as Arsenal's on the same ground just over a year earlier.
‘With the exclusion of some of the cruelties directed at young players - Darren Fletcher and Alan Smith certainly showed against Chelsea that they may just turn out a little better than Keane might think - the Irishman was returning to a point that could have been made at any time since United won their last title two and a half years ago.
‘It was that the most critical problem at Old Trafford is not the disappearance of competitive talent - Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Paul Scholes, Ferdinand, when his head is reasonably attuned to the rest of his body, John O'Shea, in the form he showed when he first came into the team, utterly contradict that notion - but a failure to remember what it was that first created all of the club's success.
‘The pattern is deeply entrenched and victory over Chelsea should detach no one from the reality that the performance against Charlton - and then every effort until the end of the season - is the only legitimate guide to the significance of Sunday's triumph.’