After Sunday's emphatic 2-0 derby victory, Telegraph Sport takes a look at where United are beginning to click as their top-four challenge gathers momentum.

The Fernandes Factor

The sight of Bruno Fernandes putting his finger to his lips and telling Pep Guardiola to button it after a verbal exchange with the Manchester City manager in the final minutes of Sunday’s 2-0 derby win will only have cemented his status as Old Trafford’s new darling. “He infected the place. Stuck his chest out, put his collar up and said, ‘Look at me’.” That was Sir Alex Ferguson in 2002 reflecting on the instant impact Eric Cantona had upon his arrival at Manchester United a decade earlier.

Cantona came into a better team than the one Ole Gunnar Solskjaer currently presides over, and only time will tell whether Fernandes’s electrifying start is an appetiser to greater things, but there has certainly been a Cantona-esque feel to the way the peacock Portugal midfielder has breezed into the place and galvanised all around him.

No other player in the Premier League has been involved in more goals (five) than Fernandes, since his first game in a red shirt at the start of last month, and suddenly there is so much more poise, precision and penetration to United’s play. United are averaging 2.9 more shots per game with Fernandes in the side. It should certainly be no surprise that he has been named February’s PFA Player of the Month.

United had clearly worked on the free-kick routine that yielded their first goal against City, when Fernandes clipped an exquisite pass over City’s defence for Anthony Martial to turn and volley home. Executing that in training is one thing, though, having the confidence and quality to perfect such a pass in one of the biggest games of the season is another matter altogether but it is that injection of fantasy - or “X-factor” as Solskjaer calls it - that has illuminated a team that has spent too long trying to force the issue.