ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE: Manchester Utd 5 Birmingham City 0: FOR BEN Foster, Old Trafford must have felt very different to when he left Manchester United for Birmingham City complaining, with little tact (and even less statistical evidence), that the green-and-gold protests were undermining the team.

The stadium, once again, is fundamentally red, the mutiny placed on hold. The team are on course to overtake Liverpool with a record 19th league title and, as the goals flew in, the crowd remembered Foster’s words and took a delicious form of revenge.

“Foster, Foster, give us a save.” Foster’s return to Old Trafford coincided with Dimitar Berbatov becoming the first Premier League player for eight years to score three hat-tricks in a season and Edwin van der Sar overtaking Peter Schmeichel in terms of clean sheets over their careers: 129 v 128.

Later, a Glaswegian football manager could be found doing his best impression of Taggart as he fended off questions about the financial restrictions imposed by questionable owners – “Murder! Murder!” he said of the current transfer window – but this was Alex McLeish, not Alex Ferguson, and the executives in question were Carson Yeung and Peter Pannu rather than Malcolm Glazer and sons.

United look good enough to hold off their challengers in the title race. A win at Blackpool tomorrow would put them five points ahead of Arsenal and six clear of Manchester City with a game in hand. They are 10 ahead of Chelsea, courtesy of a 16-point swing since the start of October. Which is not bad for a side that has bedazzled us only sporadically this season.

Ferguson has taken issue recently with the suggestion that his team have maintained their unbeaten record without playing particularly well. The truth is somewhere in between but it is still a remarkable position considering the turmoil involving Wayne Rooney and the fact the man who scored 34 times for United last season and won a clean sweep of the player-of-the-year trophies has managed only three goals. United’s opponents must dread Rooney returning to the days when the crowd rose in anticipation every time the ball was at his feet. At least he is contributing again, playing in Berbatov for his second goal and brilliantly involved in the game’s outstanding moment, culminating in Ryan Giggs turning in his cross to make it 3-0 in first-half stoppage-time.

Birmingham were obliging opponents, committing every sin for a visiting team to Old Trafford: standing off their men, defending too deeply, careless with the ball and conceding so early – barely a minute had passed when John O’Shea flicked on Giggs’s corner for Berbatov to open the scoring – to encourage thoughts of a goal fest.

After that, it was an exercise in damage limitation and it could have been considerably more harrowing than simply Berbatov rounding off his hat-trick via another exchange with Rooney and Giggs and the hitherto wasteful Nani scoring with his umpteenth shot.

McLeish described the defending as “verging on the amateur” and Birmingham, on this evidence, look a side that could feasibly be relegated. There is a bad vibe about the Midlands club, the sense of a fractured organisation.

Afterwards McLeish had to use all his diplomatic skills when he was asked about Pannu emailing the Birmingham Mailon Friday to defend the club's spending since they moved into power and, in the course of that, questioning the players the manager had signed. Pannu concluded that "no one can blame him (Yeung) if he is not sure if his money is well spent and that if it is translated into the league position in the table".

McLeish sidestepped most of the questions, claiming he had not read the article. His relationship with the board was strong, he said, but he sounded exasperated as he reiterated the importance of bringing in a new striker now deals for Republic of Ireland international Robbie Keane and Kenny Miller have fallen through.

“I can only ask the board – then it is up to them,” said the Birmingham manager. “I can’t do everything at the club. I have to leave the finances up to them.”

• Guardian Service