GARY NEVILLE CLAIMED BEFORE THE start of last season that he would give up all the trophies and medals he had won during an illustrious career with Manchester United if it meant winning the Barclays Premiership once more. “The past doesn’t mean a thing,” he said. “It is winning the next one that counts.” Whether Sir Alex Ferguson would be willing to sacrifice all of his achievements over the past two decades in return for wrestling the league title away from Chelsea this season is unclear, but given the United manager’s reluctance to discuss the 20th anniversary of his appointment at Old Trafford, it is safe to assume that his own philosophy does not differ greatly from that of his captain.

Ferguson wrote in his programme notes on Saturday that his first intention was not to pay any attention to the milestone, “lest it confuse and distract me”, which served only to emphasise how sharply Chelsea’s dominance has focused United minds.

A lunch in his honour is probably a distraction Ferguson could do without today, therefore, but, having watched his team comfortably dispatch Portsmouth to record a fifth successive Premiership win that consolidated their position at the top of the table, the manager can afford himself a moment’s reflection.

Ferguson expressed satisfaction that his players did not let the occasion “become a carnival or a circus” — “we played with great professionalism,” he said — but while their football did not quite scale the heights of the 4-0 defeat of Bolton Wanderers the previous weekend, it was still an emphatic performance.

Portsmouth had raised the white flag as early as the tenth minute, although by leaving Kanu, the Premiership’s top goalscorer, on the substitutes’ bench for the entire game, maybe Harry Redknapp, the manager, had conceded defeat even before kick-off.

If we ignore Wayne Rooney’s dive under a non-existent challenge from Dejan Stefanovic to win the penalty from which Louis Saha scored his seventh goal of the season, what Portsmouth were doing allowing the England forward to run 20 yards unchecked on to Neville’s throw-in only they will know. That they were missing three of their first-choice defenders was no excuse.

Portsmouth started the day three places below United in the table but they looked worlds apart for the vast majority of a one-sided contest that had slipped farther away from them when Cristiano Ronaldo bent home a 25-yard free kick.

Nico Kranjcar might have at least made it interesting but for a woefully miscued shot from 12 yards not long after the restart, but eight minutes later Nemanja Vidic capped another impressive display when he directed a well-placed header from Neville’s cross beyond David James, and but for the Portsmouth goalkeeper, who made a hat-trick of saves from Neville, the hosts would have run up a rugby score.

Sorely missed in the 1-0 Champions League defeat by FC Copenhagen three days earlier, Neville, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs were again instrumental and Ferguson said that the form and fitness of that trio will be central to United’s title challenge. “These are the players that have been there before,” Ferguson said. Time will tell whether the future is red or blue.