Once again, Rafa Benitez was also quick to praise his coaching staff for helping him to navigate a “demanding and competitive” league.
Achieving promotion at the first time of asking - making United just the second club in six years to do so - places this achievement in a “very good position”, admits Benitez.
“They were asking me this question a lot of times,” Benitez said when asked where winning the Championship title ranked among his glittering achievements.
“It is always like the Champions League when you won or it’s the league or the FA Cup or something.
“It’s difficult to say, but I think it’s a great achievement for all my staff, all my people, because it’s a very difficult league, it’s very competitive.
“So I will put it in a very good position but I will not say it is better or worse than the others, because I appreciated those then and I enjoy all of them.
“I found the league quite interesting as a manager.
“It’s very difficult; you play two games a week, sometimes three games in 10 days, and you don’t have time to recover.
“It’s very physical, very demanding, and also the difficulty that you have is that if you for example play the Champions League and the league, you go away during the week and you change the environment and you change everything.
“But, when you play in the same country, the same type of teams and the same league, you don’t change and you don’t have time to change.
“Then it’s very demanding physically and mentally, so it’s quite difficult for players and staff but I think we did well.”
I cannot understand why playing two games a week, which doesn't happen too often, in the Championship is any different to the likes of Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal who play two games the entire campaign with cup runs and Europe.
If we hope to (one day) compete with the big clubs, we had better get used to it.