He did bring back Juan Sebastian Veron, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Laurent Blanc.

Blanc, back after his broken nose, played alongside John O’Shea to form United’s 13th centre-half pairing of the season, while Gary Neville moved across to right-back.

Ferguson’s players must have read his programme notes and they tore straight into the Rams.

Van Nistelrooy twice went close before Solskjaer opened the scoring after six minutes with, appropriately enough, his sixth goal of the season.

United worked a free-kick out to Mikael Silvestre on the left and when the Frenchman crossed into the area, Solskjaer controlled the ball beautifully with his first touch and then lashed it past Andy Oakes with his second.

Four minutes later it was 2-0 and this time Solskjaer was the goalmaker rather than goaltaker.

The Norwegian received the ball on the right-hand side of the Derby box and drove it across to the back post for Roy Keane to knock home his first goal of the season.

The goals gave United the lift they so badly needed and they began to look like their old confident selves.

United tried for a third and Oakes held a Veron free-kick before Solskjaer fired over.

Paul Scholes then missed a glorious chance to put United even further ahead when he headed Veron’s free-kick over from just a couple of yards out.

At the other end, Fabien Barthez was clearly getting bored and despite his catalogue of gaffes this season, he risked another one when he took the ball around Malcolm Christie on the edge of his own area.

United continued to pepper the visitors’ goal and Keane drove narrowly over after he had been teed up by Gary Neville.

Oakes was being kept busy and he denied Veron and Scholes before parrying a shot from van Nistelrooy.

However Oakes was at fault for United’s third goal on 58 minutes when he failed to hold van Nistelrooy’s shot-cum-cross and Solskjaer bundled home his second of the night.

United were not finished and they scored a fourth in the 63rd minute when Keane pulled the ball back for van Nistelrooy to score his 12th goal of the season.

Scrooge-like Barthez, who was later replaced by Roy Carroll, denied Derby a consolation goal when he made a great point-blank save from Christie.

There was still time for a fifth and Scholes scored in the 88th minute to chalk up United’s biggest win of the season.