Fulham 3 Manchester United 0:ENGLISH FOOTBALL can offer few greater treats than the prospect of a big game at the Cottage on an ice-blue December day by the glistening Thames. Just do not expect Alex Ferguson to agree. As the sky darkened, he watched his side stumble to their biggest defeat against Fulham, in 69 encounters stretching back 108 years, with a performance that bodes ill for their hopes of defending their Premier League title.

“There’s no light at the end of the tunnel,” Ferguson said, gloomily discussing his medical staff’s frantic work to return some of his defenders to active service. After winning three of their four matches since he was forced to take the desperate measure of converting Michael Carrick into a central defender, United gave a performance that provided the true measure of their plight.

“We were playing a wounded Manchester United today,” Roy Hodgson conceded afterwards, but the result was not solely the result of United’s injury list. His team had played neatly and sensibly, with displays of outstanding spirit in every position.

Ferguson must hate the sight of Danny Murphy in particular. Three times in Liverpool’s colours Murphy scored in 1-0 victories over United. Last year at Craven Cottage he opened the scoring when Fulham beat United 2-0, and he did it again on Saturday, nicking the ball off a dawdling Paul Scholes in the 22nd minute, taking half a dozen paces and guiding his shot past Tomasz Kuszczak’s right hand. In his Anfield days Murphy was considered by Gerard Houllier to be the squad’s best technician. At 32, now in his third season with Fulham and his second as club captain, he is playing with an assurance that lubricates the movement of the whole team.

Hodgson did not allow himself to get carried away. It would be foolish, he said, to speculate on how much improvement there was still to come from the players of a comparatively small club. But his players did everything he had asked, pressing with urgency and breaking with intelligence, using Bobby Zamora’s strength and the guile of Zoltan Gera to unsettle United’s spatchcocked rearguard of Carrick, Darren Fletcher and Ritchie De Laet.

This was not the first time Ferguson had responded to the current emergency by deploying a three-man defence but he will probably not be in a hurry to try it again. The tactic of using Patrice Evra – captaining the side – as a winger, in order to occupy the attention of Damien Duff, was a failure and the 58th minute introduction of Fabio da Silva and reversion to a back four came too late.

Zamora had sealed the result 20 seconds after the start of the second half, driving home from close range after the immaculate Clint Dempsey had headed down Duff’s cross from the right. Duff completed the rout with a precise drive 15 minutes from time after Zamora deftly turned a free-kick into the Irishman’s path. The withdrawals of Duff, Murphy and Zamora were greeted with standing ovations.

For United, only Wayne Rooney and Antonio Valencia gave a decent account of themselves as the limits of Ferguson’s scope for improvisation were exposed. Scholes committed error after error in vulnerable positions, Michael Owen had a pitifully inadequate afternoon, Dimitar Berbatov proved he is not the man to come on and galvanise a struggling side, and poor Carrick no longer resembles an embryonic Franco Baresi. Pending the return of established defenders, other solutions will need to be found before their campaign is damaged beyond repair.

But this was Hodgson’s day. He is the eighth manager employed by Mohamed Al Fayed in the 12 years since the Egyptian bought the club and he seems by far the best equipped to stabilise the club’s fortunes. “Roy has been exceptional,” Mark Schwarzer, the goalkeeper, said afterwards. “You should see him on the training ground, day in and day out. He doesn’t stand around just barking instructions. He takes 95 per cent of the training sessions himself.”

Nothing about Hodgson’s side looks flaky or insubstantial. Their ultimate ambitions may be limited but they are providing conclusive evidence mid-table is not synonymous with mediocrity.

Guardian Service