Omonia keeper Uzoho steals the show despite sloppy Manchester United’s spoilsport late winner

I guess you couldn’t really complain that it came out of nowhere.

With Manchester United seemingly heading for the very silliest of Europa League draws – and a crucial one that would surely have condemned them to the play-off round that would mean a) two extra matches and b) a reasonable chance of those two extra matches being against your Barcelonas, your Juventuses or the Atletico Madrids of this world – up popped goalscorer extraordinaire *checks notes* Scott McTominay to smack home the first goal of the night from United’s 34th attempt on Omonia Nicosia’s goal.

Sometimes, there’s not a lot of point to analysing things too closely. Sometimes football is just a bit daft. On a night when Arsenal had beaten Bodo/Glimt via a pinball ricochet off Bukayo Saka, it looked like United were going to left staring at the other, shittier side of the football coin and left ruing the chance after chance they failed to convert. There comes a point, and our entirely unscientific yet wildly confident shout is that it’s about shot number 20, where you’re really quite a long way beyond bemoaning a lack of clinical precision or composure in the finishing and accepting that you’ve arrived in the realm of the absurd.

By that point, something should have flown in by pure chance. It’s not like United took 34 long-range, low-percentage pot-shots either. Marcus Rashford – who had 10 (ten) attempts on goal all by himself – will we suspect never quite get to the bottom of how he didn’t get on the scoresheet.

Five of the 12 saves made by Omonia’s inspired keeper Francis Uzoho were at Rashford’s expense, and they were often spectacular.

While Omonia defended gamely and whole-heartedly – as anyone who saw them give United a rare old scare last week would have expected – the fact is that United had the chances to issue a paddling. Whatever praise Neil Lennon and his players deserved, without their keeper it would have been very different.

There was no denying that Uzoho was the story of the night, especially when he could still be seen grinning from ear to ear while accepting the United players’ congratulations – far less grudging than they might have been a few minutes earlier – but especially when, still visibly delighted, he gave a post-match interview that gleefully and magnificently defied all the po-faced “ah look it’s nice to score but the main thing is the three points” conventional drudgery of the form. He was loving it, and…