Jonny Evans makes second Manchester United debut and looks like he's never been away… fans would not complain if he stays with the club for the new season

It is not often that a regulation challenge in the 70th minute of a pre-season friendly is met with a similar response to a goal being scored.

As Jonny Evans slid in to tackle Lyon's Pathe Mboup and clear any impending danger, the majority of the Murrayfield crowd rose to acclaim their unlikely returning hero.

Evans was playing in the famous red shirt of Manchester United for the first time in eight years in the friendly in Edinburgh. Judging by the reaction from the fans, absence has made the heart grow fonder.

It was back in March 2021 that then United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer only half-jokingly lamented the decision to sell the Northern Irishman to West Brom for £8million in 2015, as his side prepared to face Evans' Leicester in an FA Cup quarter-final.

'You know, Jonny Evans should have been a Manchester United player now, of course,' Solskjaer said.

There were undoubtedly others at the club who have shared that sentiment since Evans swapped United for the Baggies and then for Leicester after 198 games, three Premier League titles and a Champions League triumph.

While Evans was unquestionably struggling towards the end of his first stint at Old Trafford - which included a six-match ban for his part in a spitting storm that also involved Papiss Cisse, with the former Newcastle man given a seven-game suspension - his departure was hardly preceded by the arrival of successful, world-class centre backs.

The likes of Eric Bailly and Harry Maguire joined after he left and you could argue it is only in the last couple of years, with the additions of Raphael Varane and Lisandro Martinez, that United have got it right in a previously problem area.

So it is little wonder Evans has been brought back into the fold by Erik ten Hag,