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It is now six consecutive Barclays Premier League defeats for Portsmouth, only two this season, but enough to place them bottom of the table. No wonder Harry Redknapp, the manager, committed a Freudian slip by mentally transferring last night’s match to Upton Park, home of his former club, West Ham United, rather than Fratton Park. He was not the only one wishing he was a hundred miles away after a night that put the hum in ho-hum.

Manchester United were worth their victory, a valuable one considering Portsmouth have a better home record against them than any other Premier League team visiting the South Coast, but this display was efficient rather than exhilarating. United went a goal up after 32 minutes through Darren Fletcher and did not look like surrendering the lead thereafter.

The most significant event surrounding the club this week will be the arrival of Dimitar Berbatov, despite the meaningless protestations of Tottenham Hotspur yesterday. United should look a lot livelier once that transfer goes through.

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Keen students of irony will have noticed the game plan that outwitted Redknapp – the Christmas tree. It was the formation that Fabio Capello claimed England played last Wednesday against the Czech Republic, the one that the Portsmouth manager dismissed as a conventional 4-4-2 with Steven Gerrard dying on the left. United deployed it with Wayne Rooney as the star, or angel (or fairy, depending on your predilection) and Carlos Tévez and Anderson high in support.

Most impressive, though, was the way that Fletcher got forward in support from the right of midfield, making nonsense of the claim that the starting position is more important than the finish, and showing Capello, who was in the stand with two assistants, what he was missing by picking a player as inert as David Beckham on one flank. Fletcher, the Scotland player, is no Cristiano Ronaldo, but he has scored twice in as many Premier League matches, crucial interventions considering United’s underwhelming start to the season.

This is still very much a patched-up side for Sir Alex Ferguson, considering the high proportion of absentees in midfield, and the substitutes’ bench looked like a Carling Cup tie come early. Even so, there is an ethos at the club that extends beyond the celebrity names and even a second-string United are capable of putting together passing movements of exquisite beauty, verve and ambition, such as the one that brought the goal.

It came after a sequence of 13 passes that included a perfect eye-of-the-nee-dle ball by Tévez inside Glen Johnson, the Portsmouth full back, for Patrice Evra to chase. Now in behind Portsmouth’s defenders, his cross to the near post was the type of delivery that centre halves hate most and Fletcher’s run was equally problematic.

In attempting to deal with both, Sol Campbell contrived to deflect the touch of the United midfield player towards his own goal, where Sylvain Distin made a final, futile attempt to keep it out. Fletcher ran away in celebration, although he may be denied by the dubious goals panel and television experts were chalking it up to misadventure by Campbell at half-time.

This seems harsh. It was Fletcher’s run that caused the chaos and his boot that steered the ball goalwards. Without his presence, a Portsmouth player would have hoofed the ball clear and United would have been without their first win of the season.

At least this is an improvement on last season, when United took two points from their first three matches, including a draw away to Portsmouth, with Ronaldo sent off. With Chelsea and Liverpool setting an early pace - one more convincingly than the other - United could not have afforded a repeat of their worst start in 15 years, however true Ferguson’s wisdom that no titles are won in August.

Chelsea already have that relentless look about them and have been liberated by Luiz Felipe Scolari at home, and defeat at United’s bogey ground, Fratton Park, would have left Ferguson’s men five points adrift after only two games. In defence of United, that never looked like happening.