As meaningless end-of-season games go, Manchester United versus Cardiff seems pretty well up there.
Its relative irrelevance is obvious. The only two Premier League contests that really matter on Sunday are taking place in Brighton and Liverpool.
Yet for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, this match at Old Trafford should be of huge significance.
Fail to beat Neil Warnock’s already-relegated team and that's a record of two wins in 12 games.
At a club with the stature of Manchester United, that is, quite simply, sackable form.
When Jose Mourinho’s contract was terminated in December, he had won two of his past eight games.
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Sure, the meeting with Cardiff has little riding on it — although United could jump ahead of Arsenal into fifth, should Unai Emery’s side not win at Burnley, which could mean avoiding the possibility of joining the Europa League in its end-of-July qualifying stages.
It would also mean an extra few bob in top-flight prize money.
Yet the broader importance is that the players have to show they will respond to Solskjaer.
They got him the job by showing a bit of vibrancy, yet have slouched through the last two months of the season.
The deeds of Manchester City on Monday, Liverpool on Tuesday and Tottenham on Wednesday have only put United’s efforts since early March into painful perspective.
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For every clip of, say, Danny Rose’s lung-busting efforts in Amsterdam, there is a clip of Luke Shaw lumbering his way around the Huddersfield pitch.
Divock Origi has just scored two goals in a Champions League semi-final and the clincher in a must-win Premier League game at St James’ Park. Romelu Lukaku has not scored in his last eight appearances.
No-one is suggesting Origi is a better striker than his Belgian countryman, but their respective form and movement are typical of the contrasts between United and the clubs above them.
What the relevant tests would show is not certain, but the glaring evidence of your own eyes suggests the fitness levels of Man City, Liverpool and Spurs are way above those at United. And as for the levels of spirit, intensity and passion, not to mention technical excellence — let's not even go there.
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Showing those characteristics against doomed Cardiff in a final-day fixture would hardly be proof that this is a squad that can challenge at the top next season. But another failure to show them should raise doubts about Solskjaer’s long-term suitability for the job.
Brutal? Yes. But elite professional football IS brutal.
Having sealed La Liga a while back, Barcelona manager Ernesto Valverde will probably go on to win a domestic Double. But, after Tuesday night, he will probably also be sacked.
And just as he, quite rightly, got the United job on the back of a brilliant set of results, so Solskjaer could lose it on the back of a horrible set of them.
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Bear in mind, the two matches he has won in the past two months, home games against Watford at the end of March and then West Ham a fortnight later, were hardly the products of convincing performances.
Of course, it is extremely unlikely Ed Woodward and the board will perform a U-turn less than two months after giving the Norwegian a long-term contract. But if United sign off with the sort of whimper we heard at Huddersfield on Sunday, Woodward would not be doing his duty if he did not review Solskjaer’s position.
As the 30-point chasm so starkly suggests, and a week of incredibly brilliant football without them underlines, the gap between United and the top two clubs is even bigger than those in the Old Trafford hierarchy might care to believe.
And this dismal end to the season must make them ask whether Solskjaer is the man to bridge it.
