Manchester United fans will have rolled their eyes and feared the worst upon seeing the team sheet for their side's Tuesday night match against Stoke City, and with good reason.
Marouane Fellaini was chosen in midfield, with Morgan Schniederlin dropping to the bench. United are statistically far better with the Frenchman in the side, so to drop him for the returning Michael Carrick (who was tasked with chasing Bojan around all day) meant that the supporters could do little but fear that another abject performance was on the way.
They would have been pleasantly surprised to then see the perhaps uninspiring starting XI put in what is probably the best 25 minutes of football they had seen since Sir Alex Ferguson was in charge.
This was not the Manchester United that we had seen for the majority of the season. Risky passes were played, and opposition defenders were taken on, so before a goal was scored the fans were right behind the team because finally they were being given something to shout about.
When the goal did come, it was down to a player who is really rising to a situation that should be far too much for him. Cameron Borthwick-Jackson has been unsettlingly comfortable in recent weeks. How is it that a player who had never been labelled as a standout for an U21 side where Nick Powell and Will Keane are running the show every week, suddenly gets dropped into the first team at Manchester United and looks every bit like he belongs there?
CBJ's delivery for the first goal was inch perfect, Jesse Lingard simply had to get in the way of it. For those who have not watched him in his short first-team career so far, he has been putting in these types of crosses regularly, it's just that nobody has been there when they flash across goal.
Which ties nicely into the next notable talking point in the game, the tactics that United were employing. I doubt Louis Van Gaal can continue to claim that they players are not being instructed to play differently, while maintaining a straight face, after that first 25 mins. His players looked for passes, made runs, and were often caught out of position, and the crowd loved it.
The second goal was absolutely magnificent, and if nothing else the takeaways from it were that this group of Manchester United players can play ball when they are allowed to, and that Anthony Martial has true superstar potential.
A ping-pong series of incisive passes left Stoke confused, and when the ball was swept left to Anthony Martial he finished the chance with complete effortlessness in a way that took the Theirry Henry comparison cliché and rubbed it all over your face.
And then it stopped.
Man United fans may not have noticed for a while, as they were still understandably riding a wave of deliriousness having scored not one, but two first half goals at Old Trafford, and looked on course to hit five or six, but suddenly Stoke were back in the game.
Then came a moment that proved how strange a night this was. United were 2-0 up inside half an hour, playing fantastic football, and Marouane Fellaini was on the receiving end of an elbow to the face. Peter Crouch giving him a taste of his own medicine this time.
United definitely coasted on the two-nil lead and the trademark hold-up play of Big Jon Walters saw Stoke give a few scares. At half time with the score at 2-0, the delirium of the first 25 minutes had been replaced by the reality that had Stoke taken one of their chances the game would be totally up in the air.
But then it started again.
Manchester United came back out in the second half and were far too much for Stoke to handle. Rooney was perhaps unlucky to have a goal ruled out after he nudged Glen Johnson off the ball in what was not the former Liverpool defender's toughest moment, but within minutes of that he had his goal.
Once again it was a very impressive team move. Initially the crowd moaned at Juan Mata's decision to slow the break down and pick out Martial on the wing, but they had barely finished that moan before the ball was in the net. Anthony Martial gave Ireland's Cyrus Christie a torrid time in the FA Cup on Friday night, and he was doing the same to Johnson here. The boy clearly has something very special about him.
Mata's cool head was a big factor in that goal, and lo-and-behold the adorable Spaniard was there to make the right pass at the right time because he was playing in his preferred position.
An hour into the game and it was over. Stoke hadn't been playing that badly but looked like a deer in headlights, caught cold perhaps expecting to walk into Old Trafford and stroll out with a result like a number of teams weaker than them had done in recent times.
And then it stopped again. But that's OK. The game was won and the foot came off the gas. Sure every fan would have loved a 5-0 win, but slow, turgid, linear football is an entirely different and infinitely more acceptable idea when your side are 3-0 up in a mid-week game. United dripped the clock and made their subs, and the final whistle was met with rapturous applause.
From an Irish perspective I tried to keep an eye on Walters, who I thought could make Cameron-Borthwick Jackson reconsider his career as a professional footballer. Instead he just put in a solid shift. Truth be told he didn't have a platform to run the game like he could have, and I get the feeling that a more traditional Stoke team targeting Walters' man-vs-child mismatch would have been far more effective than the "Stokealona" style the team now tries to implement. Not to mention the choice of Peter Crouch up front as well.
Martial will grab the headlines, but Wayne Rooney's performance was another real sign of encouragement for United fans. He truly does look like his old self playing as a striker, and his attitude looks as good as it has in a very long time. He's chasing everything, his touch is actually at an acceptable level lately, and he's taking shots like it's 2005. This is the Wayne Rooney the people in the seats at Old Trafford want to see.
It was at around this stage last season that Manchester United went on the run that ultimately secured Champions League football, and took any early pressure off of Louis Van Gaal. They put an awful Christmas and New Year period behind them and finished the season out in a manner which gave the fans something to be hopeful about for this campaign.
You can't say after a Tuesday night win against Stoke that the same is going to happen this year, but a trip to Stamford Bridge and a match against a Chelsea side on a similar upward curve should give us a better view.
