As Hwang Hee-Chan scored his first goal of the season to seal Wolves' comfortable victory over Manchester United, away fans were faced with the all-too-familiar prospect of a long journey home with nothing to cheer about.
Presumably banking on a seasonal gift from Santa Claus, the Red Devils leave the festive period looking even worse off than when they entered.
It wasn't meant to be. The Old Trafford hierarchy had risked the wrath of football fans and financial gurus by replacing beleaguered boss Erik ten Hag with promising Portuguese manager Ruben Amorim. United had stuttered, but at least they had their man now.
However, things haven't gone that way and the former Sporting Lisbon head coach has presided over lukewarm form from the Ten Hag playbook.
When the Dutchman was sacked, United were languishing in fourteenth place with just eleven points from nine games. Four points in two under interim Ruud van Nistelrooy lifted the side to the heady heights of 13th, but in the month Amorim has been at the helm they have fallen back to their previous lower mid-table position.
Have United gone backwards? Mail Sport compares the new man's ten games in all competitions with Ten Hag's latest series of games to understand the Red Devils' nightmare season.
As the United faithful watched Wolves enjoy a big new manager under Vitor Pereira, their latest defeat was the final piece of evidence, if more was needed, that they had not been blessed with the same transformation.
At first glance, Amorim is not doing too badly.
Okay, he's doing really bad. But with 13 points in his ten games, compared to 15 in Ten Hag's last ten, the recession wasn't exactly a nosedive.
His opening month also included four wins, compared to his predecessor's three, leaving supporters happy some 40 percent of the time.
A derby day victory at Manchester City, inspired by some of the heroics of the late Amad Diallo, was the greatest of them all, but a 4-0 defeat of Everton and two Europa League victories are also not to be sneezed at.
Only when you delve a little deeper into the figures, provided by Stats Perform, does Amorim's short story make for grimmer reading.
While Ten Hag has lost just two during a 10-match run, leaving fans clamoring for him to leave, his successor has suffered defeats in half of his games so far.
Two losses in quick succession – against Arsenal and then against Nottingham Forest – were punctuated by a pair of wins to steady the ship.
But United have now lost three in a row, following a 4-3 defeat to Tottenham in a chaotic match, a humiliating 3-0 home defeat to Bournemouth and the saga at Molineux on Boxing Day.
Ten Hag's team struggled to reach the final third at the start of the season. He has scored 18 in his last ten games, and it was hoped that Amorim could bring Sporting's great goalscoring form to Manchester.
The Portuguese side have found the net 19 times in their last five games, but the boss has failed to bless United with the same fluency.
The Red Devils have struck just 17 times during Amorim's reign and have now kept a clean sheet in consecutive matches, while also failing to score in a 2-0 defeat to Arsenal.
This lack of attacking cohesion is borne out in further stats: the Dutchman's United are performing in line with their expected goals ratio of 17.82, while Amorim's men have an xG of just 16.78.
They shot 38 fewer times than Ten Hag's team (145 versus 183) and had far fewer ball contacts in the opponent's penalty area with only 288, compared to the old boss's 336.
Under Amorim, United have had 28 big chances and displayed a waste that has persisted since the ten Hag days. Under the Dutchman they had 29 in the last 10.
The bigger problem, however, was United's defence, which looked leaky at best and chaotic at worst.
Despite a dismal 19 in the last 10, the move to the back three has not provided the solidity at the back that many fans had hoped for, with the system conceding just one clean sheet (in that rare good day away at home to Everton).
In contrast, Ten Hag's back four leaked just 11 in his final stretch at the helm and provided four clean sheets.
It's hard to know who to point the blame at in this regard, with the expected goals stats shining a light on the fact that United's defense may not be far from clicking.
Amorim's men have only conceded 11.06 xG, far less than Ten Hag's 14.98, meaning they are eight goals underperforming in this regard.
This suggests that some of the responsibility for United's defensive problems must lie with goalkeeper Andre Onana. He conceded his second goal in a week straight from a corner when Wolves' Matheus Cunha struck in the second half.
Amorim's team has indeed faced 102 shots, compared to Ten Hag's 104, but has scored almost twice as many goals as during the final days of the previous era.
So some encouragement, and it seems that the Portuguese plan is almost becoming reality in other departments.
United controlled the ball under Amorim and although they often did nothing with it, their 59.4 percent possession under the new man indicates an improvement on Ten Hag's 54 percent.
And when they're not tapping the ball, the Red Devils counter-attack at a rapid pace, with the Portuguese's players executing 16 fast breaks in 10 games, compared to just 12 under his predecessor.
It's undoubtedly United's most miserable start to the season in living memory and while Amorim has done little to improve that so far, those clutching at straws might still hope that the new boss's reform begins to take shape soon to get.
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