Will United give lapsed fans reason to return to faith?
After their encouraging showing in Anfield, Manchester United head to the Arsenal for their FA Cup third round game with some unexpected pep in their step.
Some of the alarmism concerning the 'r' word has at least dissipated.
The relegation talk reached a high-water mark at the end of December, following the 2-0 home loss to Newcastle, when poor Joshua Zirkzee was put in the Old Trafford stocks.
That was their fifth league defeat in that month alone, the stattos informing us this was the first time this had happened since September 1962, back when a youthful Johnny Giles was still part of Matt Busby's post-Munich rebuild.
The manager himself had been surprisingly forthright in admitting the possibility of relegation, probably in a self-interested attempt to reframe success as simply staying up.
Worst case scenario, we had visions of Jaden Sancho, in an echo of history, sending them down with a back-heeled finish. Though perhaps, given his fortunes at Old Trafford, he might forgo the non-celebration celebration.
Denis Law gave us one of the original non-celebration celebrations after scoring that infamous goal in 1974, although he was much more sincere about it than its modern exponents - most of whom are just following long-established custom and can't quite contain their smugness at having scored a goal. Law, on the other hand, appeared genuinely distressed at relegating his old club, and wheeled around like Cillian Murphy after he executed the young informer early on in 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley'.
The apocalyptic scenario would certainly have caused problems for this desk.
At the moment, our Championship content consists of a wire service provided round-up of the weekend action, reworked to foreground the contribution