Signs of a United rebirth continue

SOCCER/Manchester United 3 Birmingham City 0: A record attendance for a Premiership game made this a gross invasion of privacy. Birmingham City surely want to be left in peace to scrape together whatever confidence and organisation is still possible after a 7-0 defeat by Liverpool in an FA Cup tie.

The visitors, however, did ensure that the 69,070 crowd accommodated after the partial opening of the new NW quadrant could not cackle over a rout.

Proficiency would have appealed to the home support, all the same, and Manchester United have now won nine consecutive home matches in all competitions. Such statistics will never be awe-inspiring at this club but it will stand the team in good stead if the habit of consistency is becoming ingrained. In truth, they were not all that far away from running amok in this game.

Had Wayne Rooney taken a couple of easy chances United would have been 4-0 ahead by the interval. Birmingham did take a certain advantage of those lapses, beginning the second half by dominating possession to drain some life out of the fixture.

Birmingham have to face Chelsea at St Andrew's on Saturday. They just want injured players to come to the fore and for the tougher fixtures to be behind them. If there was any marginal benefit to a drubbing by Liverpool it lay in the fact a 3-0 defeat to United, in the key competition for Birmingham, could pass for a tonic by comparison.

The side even caught a fleeting, deceptive glimpse of itself as a threat to United. The deficit might have been cut to 2-1 in the 82nd minute, but Emile Heskey boomed a Jiri Jarosik cut-back over the bar.

Alex Ferguson's team had thus been reminded to take advantage and a minute later Rooney did score, running on to Cristiano Ronaldo's headed flick and shooting low past Maik Taylor.

Even so, the prodigy could not overshadow the man who once held that position at the club.

Rooney, indeed, ought to marvel at Ryan Giggs and wonder if he will be able to perform to such a standard when he hits the unimaginable age of 32. The Welshman, who scored the second, reckons it is 10 years since he was able to show the incandescent pace that made him famous, but Birmingham still could not shackle him.

There must be certain misgivings about the reinvention of Giggs as a central midfielder, since he could not function there in an attritional contest such as the FA Cup defeat at Liverpool, but in the correct circumstances he will thrive as a playmaker. This game looked as if it had been designed to his specifications.

He was relaxed enough to begin with a show of dead-ball virtuosity, even if a goal that morally, if not technically, belongs to him depended on wretched ill-luck for Birmingham. In the third minute he curled a left-foot free-kick towards the top corner, but after Taylor tipped the ball on to his left-hand post it had to rebound off the back of the keeper's head to reach the net. It has to be classified as an own-goal, utterly accidental though it was.

Ferguson expresses sympathy for the past United captains Steve Bruce and Bryan Robson, the West Bromwich Albion manager who also works in the dank surroundings of the relegation zone. As the Scot puts it, that pair were "instrumental" in bringing success to United, but it did not seem as if the eyes of his players were moistening yesterday. There was an exuberance when Giggs came off the wing, found Rooney and converted his return pass after a quarter of an hour.

The scorer and Ronaldo were each to release Rooney, in the 32nd and 33rd minutes, but he missed both times. No one would have anticipated then that the closing chance would see Stephen Clemence bash a drive off Edwin van der Sar in the 85th minute, but United still conducted themselves effectively.

Ferguson is happy to go along with any suggestion that a renaissance is evident at Old Trafford.

"We've got to lay down a marker for what we will do next season," he said, hoping Chelsea will be compelled to keep them in mind. United appear sure to be runners-up, but Ferguson is under an obligation to act as if they can be caught. "If they lose a game at home, it's possible," he said.

Ferguson's team have won six Premiership matches in a row. Even if they are not heading for the title, their fans might be encouraged to think that the side is still going places.