SAID it before, will say it again: We all have our woes and troubles, there are people we like and people we don’t, but there is a secret sauce which can bring any divided community together.

Listen up, there is nothing that does more to bring together Arsenal fans and Spurs fans, reds and blues, hornets and hatters, seagulls and cheese rolls than Manchester United messing up.

However low you may be feeling as the winter nights draw in, the thought of Erik ten Hag repeatedly insisting that he had made United into a good team has been a perfect salve for any ailment.

More effective than a SAD lamp, United’s collapse to 14th place has been the collective go-to drug for all of us.

Did you know that Transport for London have on occasion used calming classical music in underground stations where they fear late-night trouble is most likely to explode?

A more effective strategy would simply be to play ten Hag’s press conferences and clips of all the goals that United have let in over the last few seasons.

Big Jimmy at Camden Town tube: ”You just spilled your kebab all over my girlfriend!!!”

Little Bob: “Yes, yes, I did – it was an accident, but look Harry Maguire’s defending is on the screen over there.”

Big Jimmy: “Oh great, let’s watch together new chum.”

This week’s political budget arguing in the Houses of Commons would certainly have been more convivial if all the MPs had been given 30 minutes of ten Hag before they started their debate.

I don’t need to do research or surveys, but apparently customers are 98 per cent nicer to waiting staff when a cafe or restaurant is showing Manchester United losing a football match.

The same footage should be shown in schools, universities, prisons and oil rigs for a happier world.

It should be a national lament that, following his sacking on Monday, we can’t enjoy a weekly ten Hag press conference in which he boasts about winning the League Cup – hopelessly failing to realise that not even United fans care about this apparent achievement.

With every hiring of a new manager at Old Trafford, we must hope that they don’t accidentally get it right.

The fall of the bullies that kicked sand in our faces for a lot of the 1990s and more has been one of the few silver linings of the rise of their crosstown rivals.

Manchester City’s fake success almost make you wish for the Fergie days back… but not quite.