Satan has not risen from hell to assume control of earth. No nuclear missiles have been launched by the world's superpowers, nor is there a large asteroid on a collision course with the planet. In short, Armageddon is not here yet, this is not the end of the world. However, United have now served up two pretty stale performances in a week and a mild inquest is in order.

Congratulations if you saw this coming because I certainly did not. A month ago we did draw attention to the large number of games we were playing and the result against our beloved neighbours marked the end of a month in which we played two games a week. It is the second such period we have survived so far and understandably I think the players are all knackered.

The results up until now have been stupendous but seasoned United watchers will have observed that we are yet to hit anything like top form. I suppose we all expected that to kick in at some point or other but unfortunately the opposite has happened.

A wounded animal would have gone straight at Fullham and torn them to shreds yesterday. In the first half United looked like prisoners recently released from a Taliban cave. They wandered around blindly as if the sight of sunshine was something they hadn’t seen for a while. Fulham are a well organised outfit and took advantage of this. Scholes, great man that he is, behaved like a bit of a pillock.

The rabid hyperbole that has accompanied the result against Liverpool last weekend may have seeped into the players minds a little and I would say, from the looks of things, that they are more angry with themselves rather than anything else. Fergie should be able to get them back together again and we are still in with a shout in all the competitions but Aston Villa’s role in this championship is now critical.

This is a blip we are going through and certainly not a pleasant one. But we need to get out of it straight away because frankly, teams that start stuttering in March are teams that throw away league titles.