THE INDIE
The managers strolled away arm in arm afterwards. A glass or two of decent red wine may have helped lubricate those strained throats later, you suspect, with Sir Alex Ferguson magnanimous in victory. For Peter Reid, it had been his first experience of this particular cross-Pennine confrontation. Whether he survives until their next League meeting, at Old Trafford on 21 February (there is also a small matter of a Carling Cup encounter on Tuesday week), must be doubtful despite "democracy" ruling at the beginning of the month when supporters voted to keep the manager in his chair.
Ferguson's team, operating without Ryan Giggs, who, according to Ferguson, had been "taken sick overnight" but should have recovered for Wednesday's Champions' League game at Ibrox, did not even have to perform at anything like their optimum. It was 10 minutes from the end of one of the most low-key renewals of this normally volatile fixture when United's captain, Roy Keane, headed home Gary Neville's beautifully-flighted cross. But there were few doubts about the destination of the points.
Rio Ferdinand remembered to turn up for this particular lunchtime appointment. The former Leeds defender need scarcely have bothered, given the paucity of Leeds' assaults. As for the Elland Road "welcome" he had been promised, his hide is hard enough to deal with a few jeers and chants of "Rio is a smackhead". Nevertheless, he earned a tribute from his manager, who insisted: "Rio was outstanding. He showed great character." Ferguson added that he had never considered omitting the England man, who still awaits the Football Association's response to his failure to take a drug test last month.
THE OBSERVER
It is fair to say that no Manchester United player will ever win a popularity contest in Leeds. Although there was some competition in the invective stakes, with Rio Ferdinand and Cristiano Ronaldo getting an earful, the most provocative chant of the day was directed at Roy Keane.
'There's only one Alfie Haaland,' jeered the legions, hoping to stir up all that infamous ill feeling which so damaged both players. Inevitably, the Irishman got his revenge with the matchwinner. Dispatched as coolly as you like.
There was a good deal of inevitability about this game. None more so than the sense of certainty that came over the stadium once Keane had beaten Paul Robinson with a simple header. There would be no way back. Leeds have now lost more than they have won in this fixture at Elland Road.
It's a sign of how weakened Leeds have become that Manchester United could win here with an ordinary performance. There was much to admire in terms of organisation and toughness, but the football was not glamorous.
THE TIMES
On the way to Elland Road there were signs pointing in the opposition direction that said "Doll and Teddy Fair". What took place inside the stadium was certainly different in tone, but it was not the poisonous event some had feared.
Sure, there were five bookings, two angrily disputed penalty claims and a potentially serious knee ligament injury suffered by Quinton Fortune. But for all the chants heaping scorn on Rio Ferdinand, the fixture proved to be a time bomb that ticked but did not explode. Ferdinand, incidentally, had his best game of the season. The taunts don’t work.
Peace broke out, in part, because each foe was left with something to cling to. For United it was the three points that gave them temporary leadership of the Premiership, excavated so laboriously they might as well have been chiselled from the Pennines.
The distaste of Leeds fans towards Ronaldo stemmed from two penalty claims made by the midfielder inside the opening 15 minutes, one when Gary Kelly put a hand on his shoulder and he tipped over, the other when he collapsed after brushing Kelly’s legs. The first, conceivably, was a spot-kick, but Graham Poll decided both were dives and booked Ronaldo after his second tumble.
TORYGRAPH
A winner from Roy Keane at Elland Road with nine minutes remaining: it does not get much more painful than that for Leeds's already embittered fans. Worse still, this win by their arch-rivals sent them top of the table, if only for three hours. But the really disheartening thing from Leeds's point of view is that the "replay" here in nine days' time, in the Carling Cup, is not likely to go any better for them.
Where not so long ago there was a modest gap between these two sides - which Leeds were fast closing - now there is a yawning chasm, at least in terms of class. Peter Reid's team almost bridged the gap yesterday through a combination of good, honest defending and sub-standard finishing from the champions, but the days when United would dread this fixture have surely gone for the foreseeable future, if not forever.
Even Rio Ferdinand, on his second return to Leeds since his departure 15 months ago, was given a relatively easy ride by both Mark Viduka and the Leeds fans, whose abuse of their former player lacked any real spite. Somewhat surprisingly, the United player's drug test row barely merited a cynical mention from them.
After his disappointing performance in Germany against Stuttgart - not to mention his controversial omission by England - this was a return to some semblance of normality for the world's most expensive defender and well timed given United's visit to Ibrox in the Champions League this week. He certainly did not disappoint Sir Alex Ferguson on this occasion.
Ronaldo is undoubtedly an exciting talent, with the ability to score goals as well as make them, but the young Portuguese player is going to have to cut out the play-acting lest his reputation begins to precede him with Premiership referees. Here, he was deserving of the penalty for which Graham Poll's view was obscured, and similarly deserving of the yellow card which followed five minutes later, when he went down under an innocuous challenge by Kelly, the Leeds right-back, prompting the first rendition of the popular Leeds chant: "Same old Man U - always cheating."
Two of his first-half free-kicks ought to have been planted in the back of the net by Van Nistelrooy - never mind that he was offside for the first of them - uncharacteristically missing the target on each occasion with headers. Not surprisingly, he has never scored against Leeds. Otherwise, the French loan signing Soumana Camara dealt with him admirably in the air. Reid has done well with his loan deals: the Cameroonian Salomon Olembe was similarly impressive at left-back, which only made one wonder what Marseilles's first-choice left-back must be like.