Michael Carrick had seen it in his players, he said, but no one else can. Not so far in the Premier League, where they have suffered their worst start in 40 years, and not here in Madrid, where Manchester United’s head coach insisted they would embrace the challenge. The reaction was coming, he promised; he had looked at them and was sure of it. Instead, they were a goal down after just 53 seconds and all that came was the old familiar sting, that early opener from Pablo Barrios and a second from Ademola Lookman condemning them to another defeat.

So much for a reaction, a rebellion: in their place a kind of resignation, a sense that maybe this is just United’s reality: a game that began badly, did not get very much better, and finished even worse. True, the result could have been different, Bryan Mbeumo unable to convert two first-half chances while Bruno Fernandes struck the bar and put an opportunity wide, but that did not diminish the feeling that something is really wrong. It may even have deepened it.

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