As I sat in the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand, the raw emotion and magic of Old Trafford was all around me. It was a stark reminder that the fans and the place they flock to really are Man United’s greatest gift, writes IAN HERBERT

The sound came rolling down in waves, crashing down around us as I sat in the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand, in the moments after Manchester United had conceded a most dreadful first goal. It was low and sonorous and quite extraordinary, really. 

When a club go nine games without winning and fall behind again, you expect an air of sullen resignation – not that ‘UNITED’ which took hold and grew in a collective, magical act of defiance. 

Much more would follow in a significant escalation of protest against the Glazers and their minority partner Sir Jim Ratcliffe. But in that moment – and once more when Roma’s second goal threatened to turn this into a catastrophe – it was just about the terraces and their team. A fanbase refusing to go gently into a night of quiet desperation.

Much has been made of the supposed need to let go of a history which has weighed heavy on this club since Sir Alex stepped away. In turn, United try to release it and then cleave to it again, blindly staggering around in their wilderness. 

But on Tuesday night, in the stand bearing the great manager’s name, you looked around and were reminded of how the folk memory of Law, Best, Charlton, Cantona and Rooney is such a powerful weapon. It binds the fans back to what was once great. It is fuel.

What those fans brought into the stadium was not a naive and nostalgic sentimentality. They still demanded the best of the players. There is a clear acceptance among many that Bruno Fernandes is trying to repair things, but when he went down theatrically and protested about a challenge, he was told, ‘stop whinging’. 

This is a discerning, intelligent football public. ‘Standards’ is the word on that banner that’s been flying on the Stretford End.

But the collective view before kick-off was that if the players gave fully, then the fans were with them. ‘I just need to know they’re trying,’ said my friend Jocelyn, as we threaded our way through the crowds to the stadium. 

Harry Maguire, who has lived this period of United struggle in the raw and was terribly exposed in a wretched first half, still wore that perpetual look of defiance on his face. When United were fatefully awarded the retaken penalty kick, some were saying that Maguire should be handed the ball. ‘At least he’ll put his foot through it.’

There was a frustration with the way that moments of promise broke down, as passes from Kobbie Mainoo and Carlos Baleba went astray. And with the time it takes Senne Lammens to decide how to distribute the ball, which slows United dreadfully. Yet a recognition of the fight shown by individuals who were patently playing for and engaging with the struggles of Carrick, while contending with a scorching scrutiny.

The shadow on the wall was the owners, of course. It was significant that the chants of derision for them struck up on the Stretford End each time United scored. As if to say that the green and gold campaign won’t fade with the slightest prospect of hope this time. There were tennis balls, balloons and a sense that something is building.

Even now, after 21 years, do the Glazers, hiding in their Florida redoubt, really know that they are playing with fire? This now feels as visceral as Liverpool fans’ hate for Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jnr, 20 years ago. 

That club’s fans found ways of getting them out. They email-bombed every outfit that seemed ready to offer to help them, from Royal Bank of Scotland to US equity firm Blackstone. The audible boos when the tennis balls rained down after 20 minutes and five seconds – 20.05 represents the year the Glazers staged their leveraged buy-out – suggests protests affecting play are unwelcome for some and perhaps many. Yet the fury is unbridled. The centre may not hold this time.

The night, however, was about the power of this place to do extraordinary things. Even when Bryan Mbeumo crashed a golden chance to equalise against the post in the early stages of the comeback, you sensed something was afoot. 

You’re so close to the pitch in the lower tiers of the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand that you feel you can almost reach out and touch the players. As the stadium gave, so they received. Fernandes marshalled. Youri Tielemans made a difference. Matheus Cunha seized the game by the throat. 

And suddenly, like a river, that anthem was taking hold. ‘It’s Carrick you know. It’s hard to believe it’s not Scholes’ – over and over again. At the end Diego Dalot was flat out on his back before us. Mason Mount, who’d been on the field barely five minutes, was in delirium and the post-match acknowledgement of fans by Carrick with his players felt like a victory lap. It meant that much.

The Carrick anthem was still being sung on the concourses as we flooded out under the clear night sky, and you knew for sure in that moment why no one wants the distinctly average names like Eddie Howe, Unai Emery and Julian Nagelsmann being touted for this job.

‘I don’t want us to start all over again,’ Jocelyn told me, still trying to compute what we’d just seen, after we’d joined the departing throng. ‘I want Carrick to do it. I want more nights like this.’

We learned in the aftermath that Carrick’s career-saving half-time speech had involved him telling his players how Old Trafford could do this. ‘I don’t like to keep talking to the lads about what this place can do and the history and what’s gone before too much, but it’s there,’ he said. ‘This place does magical things. It’s done it before and it’ll do it over and over again.’

Yes, that really did encapsulate the essence of a night on which we discovered, once more, that the fans and the place they flock to really are Manchester United’s greatest gift.