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He owes a lot to his defenders, of course: in what is becoming their inimitable style, they helped him to shine. They ushered Bury strikers forward like attendants at a coconut shy to allow the Beast to demonstrate his reflexes on a series of point blank shots; they (or more particularly, Alexander) stood off them at the edge of the box so they could fire in dipping volleys to be acrobatically tipped over by the Beast; they (Jordan this time) ducked their heads under vital defensive headers to unleash penalty box pandemonium for him to sort out. And he was equal to it all.
It made for a decent cup tie, anyway. On his appointment at Burnley, Owen Coyle had talked up the joys of the cup run, and was as good as his word here. There was no hint of him putting out a weakened side. Though had he wanted to, the quest to find a defence weaker than that which played on Saturday would have been akin to that for the Holy Grail. Although the decision to stand down Duff rather than Caldwell for Kalvenes was an odd one: not that Duff shone any more than the rest of them on Saturday, just that in his case the performance was an aberration, whereas for Caldwell it was business as usual.
But enough about the defence. We did win the game, after all, and amidst a generally scrappy performance there were some flashes of decent play further forward. Paterson chased everything that moved, made intelligent runs and picked up two poacher's goals demonstrating the vital ability to be in the right place at the right time.
He's got a raggy-arsed look about him like Billy Casper from 'Kes' - his kit hangs off like everything was a couple of sizes too big, and he has a cartoon-ish way of demonstrating exasperation. But he never once sat on the crossbar watching the match, and he's got three goals in two games now: you can't argue with that.
And it looks like he's going to get the chances too. He wasn't required to chase too many hopeful punts upfield as some of his predecessors have been, but was offered a number of more artful passes and dinks over the defence from the likes of Eagles and - to a lesser extent - Blake.
Eagles was our most creative player on the night. Watched by his mentor Ryan Giggs he looked a touch lightweight at times, and a bit disdainful of the fact that he'd had to turn out on a wet Tuesday night in Bury on others, but he was always ready to show a touch of class, to try something unexpected. He came at the Bury defence from all angles, taking the ball down the middle a number of times, once to have a go at jinking through them, another time to hit a shot just over from 20 yards, and crucially was involved in the build up to the cross from the left on 40 minutes for our first, and after a burst through from the right having the shot parried which Paterson followed in for his second.
Blake and Elliott did okay too, and once we'd got the lead we always looked likely to be too good for Bury. But you couldn't say we consistently stamped our Championship authority on the game. The central midfield pairing of Gudjonsson and McCann gave the ball away with alarming regularity, giving Bury plenty of chances to have a go at our rickety defence, and they kept at us right to the end when our late second goal finished them off.
And they weren't bad, Bury: they passed it around quite well at times, created at least as many good chances as we did, and in Efe Sodje at the heart of defence had the sort of composure so obviously missing from ours.
Thankfully the Beast was able to plug that gap last night. It would require a superhuman effort to do so on a regular basis against Championship strikers though. So we come out of the game knowing pretty well what we did going into it: we've got a dodgy defence, some decent players going forward with Paterson and Eagles looking increasingly promising; and we've got the Beast.
And thanks in large part to him, we're on a cup run.