You wonder if at any point Manchester United will clock that they are the common denominator every time this happens.
There really is no glow-up in football right now quite like the Escaping Manchester United glow-up.
Such is its potency that when Marcus Rashford didn’t immediately benefit from its awesome reinvigorating powers there was a bit of daft chat that Barcelona might send him back to Old Trafford with his tail between his legs.
Can probably safely put that idea to bed now after his quick-fire second-half brace quelled a decent Newcastle showing on their own return to Europe’s top table.
Rashford had waited since October 2021 to score a Champions League goal, which when it finally came here arrived from a powerful header and a chance he made look far more straightforward than it was. He had little pace to work with but generated plenty to beat Nick Pope.
After that near-four-year wait, a mere 10-minute wait for the next. And this is the one everyone will be talking about, a thunderb*stard crafted from purest sh*twhistle, it had damn near ripped the net from its moorings before Pope had even acknowledged its existence.
It was a goal borne of the main-character confidence the much younger Rashford had in such abundance before Manchester United crushed his spirit as they have so many before and quite a few since.
It would all be so much less maddening if United were blessed with a super-abundance of attacking talent who are themselves full of goalscoring vim and vigour. But watching Rashford play like this was to be reminded that absolutely the best way to get out of a Manchester United slump right now is to get out of Manchester United.
That 10-minute blitz felt harsh on Newcastle, who had played and continued to play eye-catchingly well at various stages, their persistence rewarded with a late goal from Anthony Gordon which, coming right at the start of seven added minutes, had some potential to be more than consolation.
It wasn’t to be, but this still felt like a night Newcastle could take plenty of encouragement from. After a harrowingly difficult summer and an awkward start to the new season, this was a performance that offered plenty of reason to be cheerful. To think that more good times really can be just around the corner.
And the nature of your modern 36-team Champions League with its one massive supergroup and copious qualification safety net is that, very obviously, nothing is f*cked here.
There are plenty of far clearer points-scoring opportunities ahead for Newcastle in this competition and nothing about this performance hinted at the knockout stages being beyond them.
It was your classic ‘Keep playing like this, and you’ll be fine’ performance against one of the perennial favourites for outright glory in this competition.
Newcastle’s other pot-one assignment is PSG away and, yeah, fair enough, that’s going to be tricky as well. But it’s also their last game and at the end of January, which is ages away, isn’t it? They’ve got six really quite appealing looking games between now and then to scoop up the 11 or so points that will likely be necessary to stay involved.
And on this evidence, they can absolutely do that. This was a huge night for Newcastle with a disappointing outcome, but it was no more than that. It points to no great failing or inadequacy on their part not to become the fourth English team to beat Spanish opponents this week.
Theirs was always a different challenge to that faced by Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs over the last two nights.
Nothing that happened here embarrassed or should even really worry Newcastle unduly. Manchester United, on the other hand…
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