Man United neutralise City’s derby advantage with facile return to Champions League action

How many times, and for how long, will Joy-Lance Mickels replay the moment where the ball was arcing towards him with the goal at his mercy and the chance to score a Champions League goal at Old Trafford becoming vividly, impossibly real.

What might have happened had Mickels, a 32-year-old striker and boyhood Man United fan from Rwanda whose four goals have been so important in helping Sabah navigate the four two-legged ties they’ve had to negotiate just to get to this improbable position on club football’s grandest stage, sent his close-range header the other side of the post.

In all probability? Still a comfy United win. But it would have been 1-1 pretty late in the first half and with significant scope for a United wobble having laboured into a 1-0 lead over the first 35 minutes of the game.

There is a universe where United suffer an early-season setback of staggeringly embarrassing proportions. Say what you like about Grimsby, but at least that’s a football club that’s been around for more than nine years.

Instead, we find ourselves in a universe where United are instead 3-0 up and out of sight by half-time before easing to a 4-0 win after a non-event of a second half.

Clearly, victory here was an absolute must for Michael Carrick’s side. The major significance of Mickels’ sliding doors moment is more likely to be felt in Sunday’s Manchester derby because those late first-half goals ensured United were able to get the exact sort of win they hoped for. An easy win that allowed them to cruise home and significantly mitigate the 48-hour headstart City had in their preparations for Sunday.

City, inevitably, did not get such an easy night at the Estadio do Dragao on Tuesday and look about as vulnerable heading into the first derby of the season as a team with four wins from four games ever really can.

Equally inevitably, it’s hard to draw too many firm conclusions from a United success that had far more the feel of early-season Carabao than early-season Gazprom.

Sabah for their part were neat and tidy and game until they weren’t. They cannot and won’t be surprised by the result, but should rue the nature of some of the goals they conceded as well as that chance they missed. The first United goal, neatly converted by Matheus Cunha from a Patrick Dorgu cross, came from Sabah conceding possession under no pressure on halfway.

The quick-fire United double before half-time that ensured no unpleasantness could be visited upon the Red Devils was very much the game’s high-water mark. Youri Tielemans’ spin and cutback to tee up Bruno Fernandes was lovely stuff. Benjamin Sesko was pretty much handed a route map by the Sabah keeper so easy was the option to round him and score the third, but he followed the directions adroitly and deserves credit for avoiding the temptation to go down and claim a certain penalty rather than stay on his feet and try to score. Plenty wouldn’t.

The second half, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, went all pre-season friendly on us. United were uninterested in chasing goals, but happy to accept them should they present themselves.

One such chance duly came Lisandro Martinez’s way after the Sabah keeper, by now suffering a fairly significant beleaguering, completely lost his bearings and the location of both ball and goal in the chaos instilled by a Joshua Zirkzee backheel. Lisandro Martinez accepted the gift to become United’s fourth different scorer of the night.

A low-key but thoroughly satisfactory return to European football’s top table for United, with Zirkzee among those fringe players and youngsters Carrick was also able to chuck some minutes. Most significant is surely the minimal exertion United put themselves through before facing City at the weekend.

That, and putting a stop to all that ‘conceding two goals every game’ unpleasantness. Tougher tests await is the standard caveat applied to nights like these; the truth is that absolutely no easier tests await.

But by avoiding ignominy and unnecessary endeavour, United have got all that could be taken from an overdue return to this competition.