The Man has banged on and on and on and on for months on end about payback. Be it ending up in the doldrums, watching I****** still playing in the Chumpionship, moaning at owing people this, that and the other.

Well, the tune is going to have to change at this rate.

Even as this flesh-coloured column asked for one more dose of retribution south of the border, 5-1 would have been laughed out of court and packed off home.

That Thursday night was perfection on a football pitch. Perfection.

There’s no need for The Man to go on about how stupid those blue cards all looked.

Or question how they offset the carbon used to make them.

Or guesses as to where they ended up – some pretty dark places you’d imagine.

Nope, the football spoke for itself. And it gave everyone else in this poxy division a poke in the face too. Perfect.

• As for Derby II, The Man probably needs a heart transplant – because this one is knackered.

How do we keep doing it? No one has a clue, of course. Surely every team wants to win. Like, really win. Be it minute one or 90.

One thing it’s not is luck. You don’t do what we have managed so often, so late, by pure fluke.

It takes bottle – and a mixture of Russell Martin on Red Bull, David McGnarly throwing the ball back or the opposition time wasting for 89 minutes. Brilliant.

• Just when we all thought we couldn’t want Cardiff to fail any more than we did.

Old smiley Dave Jones is probably still moaning about how unfair life is. And that we had two day’s extra rest after beating the lot down the road.

Maybe Jones to also put in a word for the three games in six days we had before that? No, Dave? Really?

The guy is deluded and hardly deserves pats on the back for taking the freebees that have come his way this season – like Belluz – and still not led them to the title.

• Are we really supposed to take the suggestion Grant Holt could go to the massive club that is West Brom seriously? It says a lot about where we are these days that we don’t all fret over when Wessi and all will leave or be sold.

Maybe that’s because it’s all been recycled and dumped on Lambo’s shoulders – now there’s someone we need to chain down to Carra Rud.

On the subject of strikers, how good is it to see Simeon be the quick, class finisher and hard worker most thought he should be when he arrived?

Even when there’s a slow start, like with Zak, Lambo always seems to be proven right in the end.