Unable or unwilling to give one another a game, these two tired defensive teams did at least provide us all with a fight when Mark Noble briefly lost the plot and squared up to Paul Pogba, in a moment of aggravation as unexpected as a scrap in a quiet country pub.
Before then, two five-man defences had faced off in a game of little ambition involving a Jose Mourinho masterplan which involved expending the minimum energy for the return of a single point. That was the minimum the Manchester United manager said that he had come for to ensure that the last game of the season at Old Trafford could run smoothly with second place already secured.
It had been going to plan for Mourinho with precious little of note having happened when, with three minutes of the regulation 90 to go, Pogba fouled Cheikhou Kouyate, Noble fouled Pogba, Pogba reciprocated and within seconds it had escalated surprisingly. The West Ham captain was giving away around a foot in height when he went chest-to-chest with his opponent but it did not stop him grabbing the Frenchman’s face, as if he was going to try to scale him rather than fight him.
It should have been a red card for the West Ham captain, and Pogba, for all the sneakiness of the foul that had preceded it, did well to keep his cool, perhaps with the FA Cup final a week on Saturday in mind. The referee, Jonathan Moss, instead took the easy route out and booked both of them and, at the final whistle, Noble went over to make peace with an expression of mild embarrassment.
There could yet be a Football Association charge for substitute Andy Carroll who came in the second wave and might even have thrown a punch at Luke Shaw, although he escaped any punishment on the night.