IAN LADYMAN: Casemiro produced a performance for the ages at Wembley, he’s been worth every penny

It was late in the game at Wembley when substitute Jacob Murphy stole a yard in the Manchester United penalty area and thought he could salvage something for Newcastle. He could not. United midfielder Casemiro saw to that.

Briefly, after he had closed Murphy down like a hungry dog and blocked the shot, Casemiro looked as though he may struggle to his feet. The Brazilian is 31-years-old and the position he plays requires energy. Well, it does the way that he plays it.

But when he needed help, it was on hand. Luke Shaw dragged his team mate up. David de Dea and Lisandro Martinez dusted him down and then, finally, his old Real Madrid team-mate Raphael Varane took his face in his hands and all but kissed him.

They know what it takes to win trophies, those two. They know how it feels to win. They have in the region of 20 major honours between them, including nine Champions League medals. Yes, nine.

So big game performances are not alien. On Sunday at Wembley Casemiro produced one for the ages to ensure Erik ten Hag’s first season at United will have at least one trophy – as well as a heap of individual and collective progress – to reflect on when it’s all over in May.

Holding midfield is such important position in the modern game. They used to call them just ‘central midfield’ players. United have had some decent ones down the years. Roy Keane, Bryan Robson. Now they have another and watching Casemiro play in yesterday’s final was to wonder at how United spent so long trying to sign somebody else instead.

United’s summer-long pursuit of Barcelona midfielder Frenkie de Jong was in vain last year. Written off as another bungled United transfer, Casemiro’s subsequent arrival on August 19 was not unheralded but was certainly seen as something other than a coup. It looked and felt like a gamble, an expensive one. The outlay was in the region of £60m and the contract was to last four years. That’s a lot of money for a player who was never the club’s first choice.

The thing about transfer fees, though, is that they only really get talked about when players struggle. Casemiro, it can be said, has not struggled. The Brazilian does not look like a Premier League athlete. He can appear heavy (he isn’t) and is not quick. But his intelligence and experience and an ability to lift himself when it really matters have already combined to establish him as one of the stand out performers of the English league season.

At Wembley his influence was constant. He scored the opening goal – his fifth for the club – at a time when United did not have control of the game and his reaction after it survived a VAR check for offside – a clenched first in the direction of the United support – was reminiscent of Keane during his peak years.

There are some hard judges out there in football TV land. Keane is one. Our own Graeme Souness another. But even Souness has been won over by Casemiro’s persistent quality after initially doubting whether United had signed a really great player.

The last few years have been a struggle for United but finally the club is delivering upgrades on what they have had before. In the manager’s seat, for sure, at centre half and now, at last, at the heart of the team. Paul Pogba, for example, was at United for six years during his second spell yet Casemiro has already wrought more influence than the French player ever did.

Casemiro improves players, too. Not just by word but by deed. Keane was the kind of footballer who could drag players along with him by sheer force of personality and example. It will be some time before any United player of that ilk can even be spoken about in the same breath.

But Casemiro has already had an influence on his compatriot Fred, who played alongside him yesterday, while offering a security to the defensive pairing behind him that United central defenders have not had for a long time.

Four years still feels like a long deal for a player of this age. Will the South American still be such a force of nature in his mid-30s? Maybe not. But maybe United have invested in the here and now. Maybe they just recognised a short term need and what was required to satisfy it. Maybe it was smart. When players do well, those behind the transfer can afford to feel smug. At United it’s been a while.

But the wheel is turning at Old Trafford. Ten Hag is building a team and a spirit that trumps anything for a decade. Casemiro has a bundle of medals at home. Champions League x 5. La Liga x 3. Set next to all that, the Carabao Cup shouldn’t really mean that much. But as he celebrated on the field yesterday evening, it seemed to mean the world and maybe that, as much as anything, tells us an awful lot about him.