Sky Sports' Johnny Phillips: Savour Wolves' success – it’s a taste of things to come

It is OK to still be talking about last Saturday isn’t it? To dwell a little longer?

Sometimes it is good not to move on. For once, international week has come at the right time. Let’s not talk about tomorrow; the next team selection, the next goal, the next thing in the never-ending cycle of football where the next game is always the biggest one. Last Saturday was the biggest one.

And it delivered a night that lived up to the pre-match hype. The four stands were reverberating throngs of partisan support. Many had spent their Saturday off boosting the local economy in the city centre hostelries.

As a result, there was a raw energy and passion that can be hard to reproduce for earlier kick-offs. The celebrations that greeted both goals were a raging elation, near primal screams echoing down from the South Bank.

United’s supporters did their bit too. For all that Old Trafford is a sterile arena of 21st Century commercialism, the United travelling support has always been the antidote to this. Ole’s At The Wheel, don’t you know, and the visiting players did not lack for inspiration of their own.

On one level, there was wide-eyed astonishment among supporters as Nuno Espirito Santo’s team systematically dismantled Manchester United in front of their eyes. A patient first half, getting the measure of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s in-form team, working out where the game could be won, followed by a second half where they asserted control.

By the end, the United manager could only watch on, resigned to his team’s fate, as the home supporters cheered every Wolves pass. Olé to the anguished Ole.

Yet, this was also a performance entirely typical of Nuno’s 2018/19 team. We had seen all this before. Against Spurs at Wembley, for instance, the pattern was not too dissimilar.

On both occasions Wolves finished the match entirely dominant. There was no answer to those cross-field switches. Wolves dictated where the ball was going. United knew what was coming but had no way to cope with it.

Any classic cup tie needs its moments of drama, and there were enough on the night to keep everyone engaged. At first it was the sense that Wolves may rue the passing of the game’s key chances. When Diogo Jota was sent clear by Ruben Neves, United’s goalkeeper Sergio Romero should have been tested more fully.

Romero lived up to his reputation as the best stand-in keeper in the league when he flung out a hand to tip Raul Jimenez’s header over from close range early in the second half. But he was ultimately powerless to intervene.

The gap Moutinho squeezed through, when he broke clear of three assailants to set up the first, appears to get narrower with each viewing.

Raul Jimenez’s eye for goal looks deadly enough right now for someone supposedly not deemed a natural finisher.

The swift counter-attack for the second was made for a player of Jota’s qualities. Luke Shaw dumped on his backside, as the Portuguese forward tore through the middle and finished clinically.

There are many ways to ruin a football match, and VAR is fast becoming the option of choice for the football authorities.

But not even the bizarre decision to overturn Victor Lindelof’s poleaxing of Jota from a red card to a yellow could influence the outcome. Sure, the Swedish centre-back stayed on the ground as he slid in to make his mistimed challenge, but the scissor action as his trailing leg pinned Jota to the floor could have had dire consequences.

Not even Marcus Rashford’s goal at the death could take the gloss off a stunning victory. There seem to have been so many this season.

Usually the fans want their own songs of celebration to be heard at the end, but on this occasion the public address announcer can be forgiven. Everybody wants to rule the world. Town was packed long into Sunday morning. That is the way it should be on such nights. These wins are for the city too.

A couple of days earlier, two of the stars of the 1970s – Steve Daley and Steve Kindon – had been guest speakers at a charity fundraiser at The Mount Hotel in Tettenhall.

There was a time when a night like that would have felt like a nostalgic break from a reality that could never quite live up to the days when trophies were won.

Instead, this was merely the prelude to the main event. The London Wolves supporters’ club, heading up a couple of days in advance, had filled a table and started the weekend as they meant to go on. The United match was on everybody’s lips. It had been for days.

The fear, when the hype becomes a little too intrusive, is that the performance falls short. But these players have the mental fortitude, as well as the obvious playing ability, to immerse themselves in their surroundings and not let it affect them.

On the Wednesday before the game, no fewer than seven players spoke at the club’s carefully-planned media event, with 14 written press and nine broadcast organisations turning up to meet them. They knew this was the biggest game yet.

A semi-final in a fortnight’s time will take the supporters to the next level. Wembley will be awash with gold. The paraphernalia merchants rubbing their hands with glee. But let’s not look ahead just yet.

Perhaps the best departing thought from last weekend’s drama is a reassuring one.

Supporters did not walk out of Molineux wondering how long the wait will be for another such night. The win against Manchester United was no flash in the pan.