'Like a couple of dodos blinking into the Salford sunlight'

I was at Old Trafford watching some old-school tactics at the weekend. Both Manchester United and Burnley played wide open 4-2-4 formations, leaving vast areas of that huge pitch patrolled by only three of four players. Edwin Hubble would have been spooked by that much space.

I thought those tactics had gone extinct at the end of the last century but the they reappeared via Erik ten Hag and Vincent Kompany, like a couple of dodos blinking into the Salford sunlight.

In truth, it was an entertaining, if slightly bizarre watch. The standard of finishing was truly awful and that sort of display against a better team would have led to carnage.

What underlines the size of the rebuild needed is that United drew against a bottom three club at home and were not the better side for large parts of the game. And crucially, this was not a great shock.

For Burnley, a single point was bordering on a disappointment on the day, but this is now only one defeat in the past eight matches. If they could just cut out the schoolboy defensive errors - it was Sander Berge not Ante Muric costing them two points this week - they might just sneak out of the danger zone.

Now that Everton and Brentford are officially safe, and Sheffield United are relegated, the Biblical line actually works, And Then There Were Three.

Two of the Nottingham Forest, Luton Town and Burnley trinity will be damned to the nether world.

With the form Burnley are showing they may just be favourites to shock everyone by rising on that final day against Forest.

Pat Nevin was writing for the BBC Football Extra newsletter