Darren Fletcher declared himself delighted to be back, having returned to Manchester United's starting line-up for the first time in 10 months on Wednesday night.
The Scotland captain has been trying to manage a career-threatening bowel condition and, after a brief Champions League appearance against Galatasaray last week, he took a major step forward at Old Trafford by leading United to a 2-1 victory over Newcastle United in the Capital One Cup.
"It is great to be back," said the midfielder. "I have had a few reserve games and a run-out in the Champions League last week but it is good to be back, especially at Old Trafford, and in a winning team, as well."
Goals from Anderson and Tom Cleverley were enough to book a last-16 meeting with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge next month.
However, Wayne Rooney revealed Cleverley faced flak for missing a golden chance when he had been set up by Javier Hernandez.
"The manager wasn't too pleased with Tom because of that miss," said Rooney. "But it was a nice goal by him and a great strike by Anderson."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article