Ferguson able to sit back and enjoy it

FA Premiership/Man Utd 3 Portsmouth 0: Alex Ferguson has insisted he wants his 20th anniversary to be as low-key as possible and the reason is simple: the Manchester United manager has more significant events on his mind. The only date on his calendar to be circled in red this month is November 26th and the visit of Chelsea, a match that will say far more about the renaissance at Old Trafford.

A cautionary note to Ferguson's aspirations is struck when thinking back to the manner in which Arsenal outclassed them on their own ground seven weeks ago. Yet United have quickly got that defeat out of their system. They have won their past five Premiership games since drawing at Reading on September 23rd, and in the last two Saturdays scored seven, without reply, against the teams who were third and fourth.

It is only the second time since Ferguson arrived in 1986 that they have won nine of their opening 11 league games.

The eulogies for Ferguson have come from every part of the country - even Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester City - but perhaps the biggest compliment is that many qualified football people did not give him a hope of getting this far when the team brought out the white flag in the Champions League last season, with Chelsea already out of sight in the league.

An infuriating truth for the 64-year-old is that there have been splinter groups of supporters who have longed for his removal, and some who still find it difficult to join in the back-slapping and dewy-eyed reminiscences.

And yet, here in front of the Premiership's first 76,000 crowd, there was evidence of a side capable of achieving something that seemed beyond everyone's power when Roman Abramovich brought in Jose Mourinho to help the transformation of Stamford Bridge from football stadium to giant fruit machine.

There was Gary Neville demonstrating the improvement in his attacking play (bizarrely, he is now the best crosser of the ball at Old Trafford), good-as-ever performances from Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, a brilliant free-kick from Cristiano Ronaldo for the second goal after 10 minutes and further proof United have developed into a more potent attacking force with Wayne Rooney playing alongside Louis Saha rather than Ruud van Nistelrooy.

True, United never scaled the exhilarating heights they had shown a week earlier in dismantling Bolton Wanderers, or in the second half of their 3-1 victory at Wigan Athletic, but that was because they were never required to do so once they had expelled any sense of contest inside the opening 10 minutes.

Ferguson has been fitted with a new seat in the dug-out - the sort of seat that cannot be far off being called a throne. It has red, padded leather, with an in-built heater, and once the first two goals had gone in he was able to sit back and enjoy the show.

Portsmouth were obliging opponents, with a patched-up defence deprived of Sol Campbell, Linvoy Primus and Glen Johnson, and it was a measure of the way United held something back that the record crowd had to wait so long before Nemanja Vidic flashed a header beyond David James to make it 3-0.

The only disappointing aspect was that the opening goal was conjured by the exaggerated tumble of a player who recently protested about the penchant for diving in the Premiership.

Rooney is clearly not as pious as he would like to make out, judging by the surreptitious way he waited for Dejan Stefanovic to come across him, knowing the referee was on the blind side, before expertly falling to the floor. Saha stroked the penalty past James and an air of inevitability engulfed the stadium.

Now that Ferguson no longer stands, the Stretford End will have trouble picking him out, but they serenaded him regardless and he dutifully responded with a jerky little wave from his seat. He may have found his anniversary a "distraction", but the crowd were entitled to seek him out.

One man, two decades, 1,105 games, 1,526 points, 154 players, 17 trophies, two decades and several wedding sets' worth of broken crockery - if only one or two teacups so far this season.