Unai Emery will hope the cut is clean. That the five-goal thrashing of Sheffield United will end with surgical precision the wobble in midwinter that started against the same opponents.
The Blades came within seconds of an unlikely victory at Villa Park just before Christmas. Nicolo Zaniolo scrambled a late equaliser but it would be the first of just five points from five Premier League games.
For Emery’s team, with their sights on the top four, it was a troubling loss of fluency. Had teams worked out a way to stop them?