Well-beaten but far from embarrassed, Sunderland bowed out of the Carabao Cup at Arsenal with their heads held high and with the cheers of their 5,000-strong travelling support ringing in their ears.
Lee Johnson declared himself 'proud' of his team's performance and, judging by the way they backed the players from first whistle until last, the Sunderland fans who made the trip to North London agreed.
It may have been the Black Cats' second 5-1 defeat of the season but there is a world of difference between being rolled over at Rotherham and being outclassed by the Gunners at the Emirates.
Arsenal, even with nine changes, still had too much talent to call upon to slip up against League One opposition.
Mikel Arteta was able to field a starting XI assembled at a cost of around £185m, and which included £72m winger Nicolas Pepe, £50m defender Ben White, and £30m former Real Madrid midfielder Martin Odegaard.
They were up against a Sunderland team that, taking injuries into account was near enough as strong as was available to Johnson, and which included only two players who attracted a fee at all - Carl Winchester and Ross Stewart - and who, added together, cost in the low hundreds of thousands.
Sunderland were already the lowest-ranked side left in the competition in the last round when they knocked out Championship opposition in QPR.
Arsenal, however, were a different proposition entirely.
But Sunderland still deserve credit for the way they approached this tie.
To have gone to the Emirates, attempted to defend for 90 minutes and hold out for either a breakaway goal or hope to take the game to a penalty shootout would have been a fool's errand.
Arsenal are just too good.
Instead, Sunderland tried to make a contest of it and implement, so far asthey could, the footballing philosophy that Johnson demands.
Their back five struggled in the early stages, and Arsenal had already hit the bar via a deflection off Elliot Embleton before they took a 2-0 lead inside half-an-hour thanks to goals from Eddie Nketiah and Pepe.
However Nathan Broadhead finished a lovely move to make it six goals in six games for him and halve the deficit, and had Winchester not been denied an equaliser by Gunners keeper Bernd Leno a couple of minutes later, things could have got interesting.
Instead, disaster struck on the stroke of half-time when Broadhead limped off with a hamstring injury and with the in-form forward off the field Sunderland lost the one man capable of providing a cutting edge in the match and, more importantly, a player whose absence could have a negative impact on their League One promotion prospects.
Early in the second half generous defending allowed Nketiah to add another goal and the 22-year-old then completed his hat-trick before the hour, minutes after Embleton had clipped the post at the other end.
Arsenal's 18-year-old substitute Charlie Patino marked his debut with the fifth goal in injury-time, and it was hard to argue that the scoreline flattered the home side.
This was the third time since dropping into League One that Sunderland have come up against Premier League opposition and their first defeat.
Victories against Burnley and Sheffield United in this competition in 2019 were upsets rather than giantkillings, but to win at Arsenal would have been a famous cup result given the gulf that has opened up between the clubs in recent times.
That does not sit easily with Sunderland fans, who need only to look back five years to a time when Arsenal vs Sunderland was a staple of the Premier League fixture calendar.
They want those days to return again.
For now, though, all they can do is hope that this is the season their club takes the first step on that road by climbing out of League One and into the Championship.
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