Manchester United finally found the key to the floodgates at Old Trafford to ease into the knockout stages of the Europa League with two games to spare.
Scoring more than one goal at home has proved beyond Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s men since beating Chelsea 4-0 on the opening day of the season.
But on a rainy night in Manchester goals from Mason Greenwood, Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford proved too much for Partizan Belgrade.
This was a good night for United and a victory that allows Solskjaer the luxury of rotating his squad for the trip to Kazakhstan to play Astana and for the visit of AZ Alkmaar next month.
And it was a night on which they could have racked up double the margin they ended up with.
Positives were plenty with Martial producing his finest display of a season in which he has missed nine games with a hamstring injury.
Better still was Rashford despite the fact he missed a hatful of chances before taking his goal, United’s third.
And completing the trinity, Greenwood was responsible for settling nerves after the senior man’s errors with United’s opener.
In all a very satisfactory night’s work particularly given United kept up their record of clean sheets in this competition remaining the only side yet to conceded a goal in after four games.
With qualification in touching distance it was no surprise that Solksjaer opted to field just about his strongest side with only Daniel James of his first choice XI on the bench.
He was rewarded with a mature and confident performance yet after several chances came and went to Rashford in the first 15 minutes the manager might have been fearing the worst.
The breakthrough came on 21 minutes and it was a case of step aside sorcerer it’s time for the apprentice with Greenwood taking his first chance of the night.
Rashford redeemed himself for his earlier profligacy by providing the assist after Fred and Scott McTominay fed him on the left side, his diagonal ball finding Greenwood eight yards out.
His first touch took out Stahinja Pavlovic and put it on his left foot, his second buried the ball to the left of Vladimir Stojkovic.
It was a third goal of his United career for the 18-year-old following strikes against Astana here on September 19 – United’s last 90 minutes victory here at Old Trafford – and Rochdale in the Carabao Cup.
Greenwood also had a hand in United’s second blocking an attempted clearance from Slobodan Urosevic which fell to Martial on the edge of the area.
Yet Martial’s skill in skipping through close consecutive challenges of Slobodan Urosevic and Pavlovic before deftly lifting the ball over the advancing Stojkovic must go down as a sublime solo effort.
There was particular delight in the celebration of Solskjaer in the dugout and no wonder given doubling leads has proved difficult for his side this season.
The real wonder was how they had not doubled that again by the end of the half with Rashford missing a fourth chance and Martial and Ashley Young joining him on the charge sheet.
Rashford redeemed himself fully with a neat finish into the roof of the net four minutes into the second half, Mata’s cross laid into his path first time by Young.
The comfort of a third allowed Rashford to take an early bath.