Manchester United suffered one of the most humiliating defeats in their long and proud history as MK Dons piled yet more misery on Louis van Gaal.
The new United boss, now without a win in three matches, watched on in misery as his team were knocked out of the Capital One Cup at the second-round stage with a 4-0 defeat.
Will Grigg and Arsenal loanee Benik Afobe scored a brace apiece as United were easily downed by a team that began the night 38 places below them in the league ladder.
It was a hugely embarrassing defeat - one that brought back unwanted memories of their last League Cup second-round fixture in 1995 when they lost to York.
But it was nothing more than the Red Devils deserved.
A team showing 10 changes from the 1-1 draw at Sunderland never settled all night.
Fringe players like Danny Welbeck, Javier Hernandez, Shinji Kagawa and Anderson were given chances to fight for a place in the first team.
But they all under-performed. Until the dying stages, when the Dons' victory had already been assured, home goalkeeper David Martin had very little to do.
United handed the victory to the Sky Bet League One side on a plate thanks to a shabby defensive performance.
Jonny Evans, captain for the night, made a glaring error to hand the Dons the lead and from then on it never looked like the underdogs were going to lose.
Van Gaal may have Angel di Maria to count on to aid his recovery - the £59.7million signing was confirmed just before kick-off - and on this evidence, many more replacements are needed, particularly at the back.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article