During Manchester United's 1-1 draw with Liverpool on Sunday, Paul Pogba was, in two words, astonishingly bad.
The Frenchman had just unveiled his new Twitter hashtag emoji, which turned up with more fervour and frequency than Pogba himself during the second half in particular. It was his first half, however, which saw the nay-sayers sharpen their knives in earnest, as United's £100m man displayed no shortage of ineptitude in defending from set pieces and conceded a penalty for an accidental yet inexplicable hand ball.
It was unfortunate if no coincidence that Pogba's lowest ebb in a United shirt would arrive on the grandest stage of all; Jamie Carragher - as per usual - expertly broke down his shortcomings on Sky Sports, explaining how Liverpool 'did a job on him'.
The dust had all but settled, then. Pogba, who might well have been named Manchester United's player of the month during a superb December were it not for Zlatan Ibrahimovic's resurgence, had enjoyed a torrid day. At just 23, and with other-worldly talents at his disposal, countless better days lay ahead for the world's most expensive footballer.
Or not, according to Eamon Dunphy, who took a predictably hard stance on the former Juventus midfielder's woes when speaking on 2FM's Game On last night.
Despite his consistently excellent displays since October, Dunphy explained he was of the belief that Pogba had become 'the elephant in the room' at Old Trafford.
Pogba was never worth £100m.
At £20m he would have been expensive. With the money they've spent with Mourinho and van Gaal, they should really have a better team.
Paul Pogba is very immature. He plays like a kid. He is not worth the money they paid for him and he won't be worth the money they paid for him.
He is the elephant in the room. He's useless.
Dunphy's harsh takedown of an expensive, flamboyant, fun-loving young player who, it should be pointed out once more, has his own emoji, is about as shocking as opening your curtains at midnight only to discover it is indeed dark.
The RTÉ pundit recently lambasted his British counterparts on the same 2FM show, explaining:
...you have to engage people as analysts who know their stuff. You have to know the game when you’re on live television and giving analysis, you have to actually know it.
They don’t respect their audience. That’s really what bugs me.
As actor Tom Hiddleston once put it, however, and as Dunphy acts out so regularly, "The dream is to keep surprising yourself, never mind the audience."
Considering his eventual u-turns on players such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic ("I judged it wrongly", he said of the latter last night), you'd imagine he'd wish to spare himself yet another tongue-in-cheek admission of error when Darragh Maloney asks him about a certain Frenchman at half-time of a Champions League quarter-final in three years' time.
