Sir Alex Ferguson tells the story of the first time he saw Phil Jones play football and the rare exhilaration of knowing he was witnessing something special. "He was 16," Ferguson recalls. "He was playing against our youth team and he was immense. The next day I phoned Sam Allardyce, who was Blackburn's manager at the time, and he just laughed at me. 'Aye,' he said, 'that boy will be in my first-team on Saturday.'"

The feeling Ferguson experienced that day was reminiscent of the first time he clapped eyes on a 13-year-old Ryan Wilson (later Giggs) with the ball at his feet and a stream of opponents in pursuit, a moment of euphoria the Manchester United manager once likened to a gold prospector who has panned through every river and mountain suddenly finding himself staring at a nugget.

Back in 2007 United went to Anfield and it was another 19-year-old, Anderson, who delivered the kind of performance that, for Ferguson, represented one of those moments when all the sweat and frustration and hardships of management felt worthwhile. Anderson did something that day that has rarely been achieved at the home of Liverpool: he dominated Steven Gerrard on his own patch. The first 50-50 set the tone. Anderson snapped into Gerrard's ankles and came away with the ball. The second time it happened, Gerrard fixed him with a stare. It was a look that said: "And you are?"

What has happened to Anderson over the following years demonstrates how quickly a young player's priorities can blur and why some of the greatest qualities a manager can possess are patience and tolerance. Fortunately for the Brazilian, Ferguson has equal measures of both. But it has been a close-run thing at times and in the worst moments, it was difficult to envisage the situation we have seen this week, of Anderson being deemed so important for a weekend fixture the manager rested him from a Champions League tie.

Anderson was held back for Sunday's game against Chelsea on the basis that his contribution to United's winning start has been so purposeful and significant. He has been the driving force in the team's midfield during a free-scoring run that has seen them accumulate 18 goals from four league games and while the season is still in its infancy, his hard running, penetrative passing and newly acquired maturity have left us with the sense that this is the juncture when he re-establishes himself as a serious footballer.

Anderson has been in Manchester four years now, so it is not before time. He has won three Premier League medals, two League Cups and helped the team reach three Champions League finals – and yet the paradox is that he has done all this without shaking the firm impression that this is someone who ought to have delivered more.

Consider, for example, those Champions League finals. Anderson was a substitute against Chelsea in 2008, replacing Wes Brown in the final seconds of extra time, purely so he could take part in the penalty shoot-out. He was removed at half-time after an undistinguished performance the following year against Barcelona, and did not get off the bench against the same opponents at Wembley in May.

Gary Neville's autobiography came out this month and the Brazilian does not merit a single mention. Three hundred pages about the glories, the personalities and mechanics of being at a club of United's size and ambition – but not one word about a player who cost €30m (£26.2m in today's exchange rate) to become the fifth most expensive player in the club's history.

What we have now is a player who is slowly reminding us why Mário Zagallo, Brazil's World Cup-winning coach of 1970, once talked of him as a "prodigy with indisputable quality". That was in 2007 after Dunga had called Anderson into his Copa América squad, and Zagallo's belief was that "everything suggests he is going to be a superstar".

Since then, however, there have been only eight caps. According to the Globo TV commentator Jon Cotterill, the perception has developed in Brazil of a footballer who has abandoned the qualities that made him so revered in the first place. "Anderson started off as the new Ronaldinho but he's changed his style of play completely. He's learned to mark. He's bulked up. He's more direct. But he seems to have forgotten his talent and creative gifts."

For United, Anderson has averaged fewer than 20 league starts per season. At the lowest moments he responded to one blast of Ferguson's temper by flying back to Brazil without the club's permission, an indiscretion that cost him a week's wages. There were stories of him meeting officials from Grêmio, the club where he began his career. Anderson, for a time, looked as though he could leave and quickly be forgotten.

The coaches at Old Trafford talk now of someone who has knuckled down, lost weight and, at 23, is still young enough to consider the best years are yet to come, particularly if he continues to play the kind of mature, intelligent football that Paul Scholes felt was coming before the start of the season. "He can be a bit erratic at times, but you forget he's still a young lad," Scholes, now a member of Ferguson's backroom staff, said. "Hopefully, with a bit more concentration, he can score more goals as well."

The question of professionalism is relevant because Anderson has had his fair share of lost nights. Not in the places where Manchester's glitterati usually flaunt their wealth, but the kind of venues where the music is a bit louder, the drinks are cheap and the carpets sticky. There have been some embarrassing headlines and like many young, rich Brazilian footballers, the sense that partying should be a way of life, no matter what time training starts the following morning.

One theory at Old Trafford is that Anderson has benefited from having a steady girlfriend and a young family and, in turn, is gradually shedding his image as the party animal who, 13 months ago, ended up in hospital after leaving a Portuguese nightclub at 6am and crashing off the road. Anderson, dragged unconscious from his burning car, was recovering at the time from a ruptured cruciate ligament, the injury footballers fear the most. "Perhaps he needed that bang on the head," one United official volunteered.

The question now is the same one that hangs over Jones and it is this: can he keep it up? There have, after all, been other moments in the Anderson story when he has flirted with the idea of becoming an authentic category-A footballer before disappearing back to the edges. "His form so far this season has been brilliant," Ferguson says, "but we always knew he was capable of that."

The key is maintaining it. These are the moments when Anderson needs to show he has become a grown-up footballer rather than the boy who stayed too young too long. The new Anderson, rather than the new Ronaldinho.