We self-professed foodies liked to meet in restaurants and talk like experts about what we were eating.

“H'm !” he said, “so, so—it is a tragedy in a prologue and three acts. I am going down this afternoon to see the curtain fall for the third time on what … will prove a good burlesque ; but it all began dramatically enough. It was last Saturday […] that two boys, playing in the little spinney just outside Wembley Park Station, came across three large parcels done up in American cloth. […]”

For well I know by your glib tongue, / To what fine country you belong, / And if your red rag did not shew it, / By your queer fancies I should know it.

And yet, United always carried the greater threat. Their movement in attack constantly confounded Southampton's defenders, with Rooney, Van Persie and Januzaj swapping places and eluding markers at will.