The image of Ruben Amorim cowering in the dugout at Grimsby will take some forgetting.
It came while his players were taking their penalties in a thrilling shootout, eventually slumping to a humiliating Carabao Cup second-round defeat.
Manchester United are not a club built to lose to fourth-tier opposition, but here we are.
They are not supposed to finish 15th, not in this Premier League era where finances are skewed so extraordinarily in favour of the biggest and most popular clubs.
Yet that is where United trailed home last season. Has anything changed for the better since? There is little to suggest so.
And the big question is this: what do they do about it?
It is not Amorim who must find the answer. Minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, chief executive Omar Berrada and technical director Jason Wilcox are the ones who must decide United’s future direction.
They were the ones who felt Dan Ashworth’s suggestions of Thomas Frank, Marco Silva and Graham Potter were not right as they moved to replace Erik ten Hag when the Dutchman was sacked in October.
They were the ones who pushed for Amorim. Berrada was the man who flew to Portugal and told the coach it was now or never when Amorim pleaded to be allowed to finish the season with Sporting.
Seventeen victories in 45 games have followed, with seven of those wins coming in last season’s run to the Europa League final.
Clearly this is not the return United’s senior management were expecting, not when Amorim was backed to the tune of £200m for three attacking players this summer despite delivering the lowest league finish since the year they spent in the second tier in 1974-75 after relegation.
Amorim spoke about being willing to walk away last season and was talked round.
There was a sense of foreboding about his comments after Wednesday evening’s debacle.
“I felt my players spoke really loud today what they want,” he said.
“No,” Amorim added, when asked if he understood what had happened to his team at Blundell Park. “But I’m the manager. It should be my job to understand what happened.”
