It was plainly too good to be true. Or to last. There were 82 seconds on the stadium clock when the Ruben Amorim era at Manchester United was jump-started. The new manager had put his faith in Marcus Rashford in the No 9 role and it was United’s great enigma who scored to put them in charge. Rashford charged about in the early running, a point to prove.

And yet it was the prompt for a slow retreat by United for the remainder of the first half. The structure was different, United set up in Amorim’s trademark 3-4-2-1, but the players were the same, along with plenty of the frustrations from Erik ten Hag’s tenure. It is not Amorim’s fault.