After a three-month break it was perhaps too much to ask that the football should be particularly compelling. It certainly was not that.
But in the absence of any riveting competitive play this was perhaps exactly what we needed. This was something familiar, something normal – an insipid performance from Arsenal and, first up, a good old controversy about a goal that should have been given but wasn't.
Sympathy is due to Chris Wilder's Sheffield United, even if he will know his team did not way play particularly well.
Wilder had spoken beforehand of the need for his team to create their own tempo.