When Minnesota United made its home debut on Sunday, there were plenty of sober-minded observers prepared to write off the team's first game, a 5-1 road loss to the Portland Timbers, as an aberration that did not reflect the actual pattern of the game.
In front of their own fans, and with fellow expansion team Atlanta United playing in radically different conditions to the ones they'd scared the New York Red Bulls in the week before, surely the Loons could recalibrate the doomsday expectations to a more realistic level?
As it turned out, reality came in the form of a blizzard of Atlanta goals.