By the end, Pablo Zabaleta must have felt a lot older than his 32 years. The veteran Argentine will not have been the only West Ham player who was willing referee Martin Atkinson to blow his whistle but his team-mates were at least spared the task of trying to shackle Marcus Rashford throughout the piece. Zabaleta, on the other hand, never got a breather.

One former player who knows a fair bit about cutting in at pace from the left and wreaking havoc against defences is Thierry Henry, and from his position in the pundit’s chair for Sky Sports, the former Arsenal striker’s appraisal of Rashford’s performance at Old Trafford on Sunday was pretty unequivocal. “This man was, for me, in the second half unplayable,” Henry said.

There were a number of moments from Rashford that electrified the home crowd but a few stood out in particular. The first, most obviously, was a blistering 50-yard run, after Nemanja Matic did so well to force Pedro Obiang into losing possession, that left West Ham’s defence frantically backpedalling before the 19-year-old slipped an eye-of-the-needle pass in behind Winston Reid for Romelu Lukaku, timing his run well, to thump home off the inside of the left hand post. Later in the game, Rashford again had Zabaleta on the back foot before cutting inside Andre Ayew and unleashing a thundering drive from the corner of the penalty area that cannoned back off the inside of the far post. He also had the presence of mind to slip a pass into Henrikh Mkhitaryan after another good run that the Armenian in turn squared for Lukaku, whose shot was expertly blocked by Zabaleta.