- Nemanja Vidic should have gone – plain and simple. He denied a clear goalscoring opportunity by clumsily bringing down the opposition striker having been done for pace, and deserved the red card that the letter of the law demanded. Why he wasn’t sent to the stands is something only Phil Dowd knows, but it would be a mistake to suggest that Villa would have been home and dry had this have happened. Manchester United more than held their own with ten men several weeks previously, and Richard Dunne should be commended for his post-match comments which highlighted this fact. The more worrying factor for United in the future is that the first two sentences of this paragraph could have referred to any number of times over the past 18 months. Whilst Vidic remains an imperious defender in many respects – his strength and aerial ability being the key two – he become an absolute liability when faced with a quick striker who can turn him. It’s the reason why Torres has always had him for breakfast, and without the stability of Rio Ferdinand alongside him to bail him out there are severe question marks developing over the Serbian’s place at the heart of United’s defence.

- Rooney scoring is now taken almost as a given, such has his form been. Much more has been made of the fact that so many of his recent goals have come from headers. Various different reasons for this have been ventured – that he’s practised them much more, that he’s being played further forward and thus will get on the end of more crosses, or even that he’s lost so much hair that he now has full control over the direction of his headers. What has in the main been excluded in these debates has been the delivery, and in particular the contribution of Antonio Valencia. To my mind the Ecuadorian hasn’t been given full credit yet for what has been a very impressive debut season at Old Trafford. He has his deficiencies, certainly – the only other person I can think of who’s that one-footed is Heather Mills – but his stock play of outpacing a fullback to the byline and putting in a decent cross is paying off for United. Ronaldo was a very very special player who would never be replaced directly, so Fergie’s challenge was to adapt the team accordingly and make up for the loss of the Portuguese in different ways. A return to having at least one out and out winger is just one of the methods he’s employed, and it seems to have worked a treat.

- I asked prior to the game whether James Milner would live up to the hype. ‘Yes’ is the pretty resounding answer to that question. The midfielder was industrious, purposive and more than held his own against Fletcher and Carrick in the middle of the park. He scored the goal and created a couple of other opportunities for himself, and all in all was unlucky to be on the losing side. The watching Fabio Capello will have been impressed. No such accolades for the other World Cup hopefuls of Villa’s front five, however. Thought Agbonlahor and Young had their moments sporadically throughout the game, neither they nor Heskey or Downing performed at a consistent enough level to suggest they could be worrying the planet’s best defences come June. Agbonlahor in particular was a disappointment – whilst he should get credit for gaining the penalty, the fact that he demonstrated such superiority to Vidic so early on yet failed entirely to capitalise on this for the next 80 minutes won’t have done him too many favours in the Don’s eyes.

- One thing the latter stages of the match did show is that O’Neill still needs a bit more investment in the squad to give his team further variety. Plan B – sticking on John Carew and lumping balls into the box – is not necessarily a bad one, but the Norwegian aside, there didn’t seem to be any other options for Villa to be able to turn to in order to unlock the United defence. Whilst their first choice XI is the match of any of the contenders for fourth place, strength in depth is something Villa need to address and it may scupper their hopes to land a Champions League place this year. Even so, their fans can take heart that the core of this team is a very young one, and experiences like today and the rest of the season will stand them in good stead in years to come.

- Much had been made of the fact that Villa had beaten United at Old Trafford before Christmas and O’Neil will therefore be a little disappointed that Villa didn’t threaten more as they did in that game. Of course the irony is that if you could reverse the two results – United triumphing in the league, Villa picking up the Carling Cup – both sets of supporters would probably be that little bit happier with their respective situations…