Scott McTominay is the type of combative midfielder who always looks to be mildly annoyed with something or other.
And after his first Premier League goal since December 2021, he looked downright angry, the celebratory air-punches carrying some serious venom.
Having slipped a notch in Manchester United’s pecking order and having been linked with a move away from the club he joined over two decades ago, the significance of the moment was never going to be lost on the 26-year-old.
It is not stretching matters to suggest his United career is at a crossroads.
There would be no shortage of suitors if McTominay considered his future would be best served away from a club where competition for places is only likely to become more intense.
Had Casemiro not been serving the last leg of his four-match suspension, there is every chance McTominay would not have been starting this contest.
This was only his tenth Premier League start of the season.
The arrival of Christian Eriksen and Casemiro - not to mention Marcel Sabitzer - was always going to present McTominay with a challenge.
And behind the scenes, Ten Hag made it clear how best that challenge could be met.
A footballer who was seen mainly as a destructive force, a tough nut, a fiend in the tackle, had to bring more to the table for a club wanting to re-establish its elite credentials.
McTominay does not have to reinvent himself to have a fulfilling future at his boyhood club but he does have to expand his limited repertoire.
He needs more goal involvements and if his four recent international strikes did not show Ten Hag he has that capability in his locker, then the hit that set up this routine win certainly did.
It was a clever run and an emphatic finish that, incidentally, was in sharp contrast to the wastefulness that had preceded it.
McTominay was fortunate in the sense that he was up against an Everton team that looked every inch a relegation-threatened unit.
Sean Dyche’s side had the odd counter-attacking moment but were almost bizarrely ponderous, Ben Godfrey’s quality-free first half typical of Everton’s overall performance.
A rejuvenated Aaron Wan-Bissaka and a hit-and-miss Antony deserve credit for the amount of danger caused down Everton’s left flank but Godfrey took the day off.
No wonder he was hooked at half-time.
Not that any of Dyche’s substitutions had any impact on the general flow of proceedings, Everton being a distant second best for most of the match.
Make no mistake, whatever you make of Dyche’s impact on the club, this is a team whose Premier League fate will almost certainly go to the wire.
United’s endeavours to finish in the top four will not go to the wire - they should secure one of those berths with some time to spare even though they have a hectic schedule and even though Marcus Rashford limped out of the action.
Ten Hag’s only concern will be the low chance conversion rate, although Jordan Pickford was in good form and some of the 29 efforts on goal were extremely speculative.
That is why Ten Hag needs his midfielders to keep contributing to the scoresheet.
And after substitute Anthony Martial had benefited from a dismal Seamus Coleman mistake - via a Rashford assist - McTominay showed an appetite to get beyond the backline.
He did not add to his first half goal and was lucky to escape sanction for a kneeing and kicking episode with a fallen Coleman that was pure McTominay, that was someone who is always mildly annoyed.
Only now McTominay looks angry, angry that his importance to Ten Hag’s operation might not be as great as he would have hoped it to be.
But if this is his way of expressing it, McTominay could yet be a key player in this new United era.
