The Stark Truth about most football fans is that they are malleable. Give them something to cheer the field and they will happily go home and pop up again next time. The power of the actual sport remains absolutely.
So this was – ultimately and against all expectations – a much better day for Manchester United. It was an afternoon that started with protest and ended with an female of the players of Ruben Amorim.
The 75,000 united supporters who were here kept on the end and went home to talk about the glazers and Sir Jim Ratcliffe and more about their captain Bruno Fernandes and the young central defender Ayden Heaven.
Fans of other clubs can spot. A round of honor after a home stretching against Arsenal? Yes, it does a bit of an underdog complex.
But these are difficult times at Old Trafford and if Amorim's players want to thank their supporters for holding them on a day on which most they had written off for the kick -off, it doesn't seem wrong with that at all.
United supporters wear their disgust of their glassers deep in their hearts. Of course they do that. The Americans have now flushed a great football club for almost two decades.
And their suspicion of Ratcliffe is also well substantiated. It has not been good opening innings from Ratcliffe and his Ineos friends. These are feelings that will continue to exist.
Nevertheless, it is the football that matters. Football fans will treat all types of treaties if the team wins.
Here, against an Arsenal team, now remained in a slow, painful process to withdraw from the Premier League title, United let that at least still beat a heart, no matter how faint, no matter how sometimes, in the home hairdressing room.
United remains a team of moments and that is rarely healthy. Here a fantastic free kick from Fernandes at the end of a first half in which they had hardly been competitive, gave them a lead that they absolutely did not deserve, but it was a goal that served to push them into a higher set of gears that we rarely see in recent days and weeks.
They did not win and that was probably true. Arsenal did enough to go out the city with pride.
But United played with an energy and a speed that seems far too often than them and Arsenal -goalkeeper David Raya had not produced, perhaps his best representation of the season, the home team would have won this competition without a doubt.
United cannot control games and it is a lasting problem. They are not good enough. They don't have the players. Until the club's recruitment department solves that problem, they will not return to the top four places in the Premier League.
Nottingham Forest has lifted a trend by winning competitions without the ball, but the Nuno Espirito Santo team are the UiTbijters and that will never be an acceptable road for a club like United.
United – who coaches them – must again learn what it is like to dominate property and territory. They have to learn again what it is to build up slowly. Until they do that, they are stuck in the mud.
In the meantime, energy and fast counters and smart definitive steps and crosses must serve them and during a thoroughly entertaining second half of football they threatened here.
The roar of anticipation, optimism and then pain when Raya somehow kept Fernandes out of the late shot and recovered to leg the spinning ball from the goal line was like something from the glory years.
All eyes turned into referee Anthony Taylor, who in turn was aimed at his watch, waiting for the meaningful vibrations that a ball would indicate on the other side of the goal line. Agonizing, it never came.
That would have been the highlight of a season, regardless of the fact that it would have hit the competition title closer to their big enemies in Anfield. That rivalry remains as real as always.
Liverpool is about to draw level with the total of 20 domestic titles from United. But winning football matches is what really counts and this is the only thing that is important for United and their supporters here.
Before the game they marched outside Old Trafford and frame their message against the owners of their club was clear and rough. We have been here before.
We remember the anti-glazer Green and Gold campaign of 2010 and then. We also remember the way Sir Alex Ferguson and his players danced on the field after they had secured their last Premier League title in 2012.
It should not be Amorim's task for paper left over the cracks by devastating ownership in this great football club, but the reality is that it is and it has been the case since 2005. Ferguson has managed it. No one else has.
Here – with important players who were missing – there were at least indications to show that Amorim's players are at least interested in playing for him. It remains half the battle at every level that you manage.
Fernandes was the best player of Amorim, as is usually the case. But the young heaven – recently poached from Arsenal – was a powerful presence when his old club insisted on a winner.
United remains 14th. West Ham will push them to the 15th when they beat Newcastle on Monday. They are where they deserve to be. However, they still have a pulse. It's something.
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