Wednesday night sealed it. There will not be a more seismic post-war FA Cup final than next month's.
Manchester City will arrive at Wembley as champions and in the final of the Champions League. They are odds-on to emulate United's Treble 24 years ago. United are the best-equipped team to stop them.
City look an unstoppable force, a team with best-in-class in goal, in defence, in midfield, up front and on the touchline.
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Since the weekend of United's League Cup final win, City have recorded 17 wins and two draws in 19 games. The morale-sustaining stalemates were in Munich and Madrid.
United have won 10 of their last 19 and there have been five defeats, all of them away from Old Trafford and most of them egregious.
That City were the last victims of a true FA Cup final shock against Wigan a decade ago is moot. That day marked the end of Roberto Mancini's fruitful but fraught reign as he turned on the City press officer during his post-match debrief. Under Pep Guardiola, City are approaching their acme.
It is just as well for United their FA Cup final week is not interrupted by the Europa League final. The meek surrender in Seville is a blessing beyond Cup final preparations, a defeat that should signal the death knell for certain squad members who have outstayed their welcomes.
Erik ten Hag will have to be creative with his final XI. For the Old Trafford derby in January, he drafted Fred into midfield, started Christian Eriksen as the No.10 for the only time all season and shifted Bruno Fernandes to the wing. A repeat is foreseeable.
You only had to glance at the far corner of the Arthur Wait Stand at Selhurst Park a year ago to know what United fans make of City's success. There they were, celebrating City's comeback against Aston Villa as the Treble was safeguarded amid a possible Liverpool quadruple.
Some of City's success in the last 12 years has been just about palatable for United supporters. City held their nerve on the final days of 2014, 2019 and 2022 to deny Liverpool richer title triumphs than their sterile coronation in 2020.
United supporters started singing "Chelsea's success is f-----g hollow" in 2007 - a year before City's takeover. City's success is not as pure as the football they play.
And, as a United staff member noted earlier this year, mud sticks. Five years on from their 100-points tally, there will be a second set of City centurions when they retain the Premier League title this weekend. They have 115 Premier League financial charges hanging over them.
City have been here before when they succeeded in overturning a two-year Uefa ban in 2020. A tactical misjudgement by Pep Guardiola in the 2021 final and Real Madrid's last hurrah have delayed the inevitable as City home in on a first European Cup. Matteo Darmian and Henrikh Mkhitaryan started in a triumphant European final for United but their greatest red contributions would be to deny City.
In 16 days' time, United will be confident of greater backing than City at Wembley provided tickets do not fall into the wrong hands of the 30,500 they have been allocated. You would hope, for the sake of the matchgoers, there are no plastic flags as there were for the 2016 final, a humdrum atmosphere after a raucous semi-final.
United have learnt from the infamous 'wall of white' gimmick for the Europa League knockout tie at Anfield in March 2016. Ticket holders were sent a white away shirt, inviting them to don the white shirt and create a mosaic-like effect in the Anfield Road End. Never mind that it was March and an evening kick-off - coat weather - it was out of touch with a following that does not do colours on Merseyside.
Of their 20 FA Cup final appearances, United have lost eight. Bolton's barely-legal triumph in 1958 so irked some young Salfordians their coach was pelted with tomatoes, stones and lumps of turf. There were galling shocks in 1976 and '79 and the conclusion in 1995 promised everything and United ended with nothing.
Defeat in a first all-Manchester final on June 3 would almost certainly sting more. City's era of dominance started with the semi-final win against United in 2011 and the worst would possibly be yet to come this year.
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