If anything is going to embarrass Manchester United into action this season then maybe it's the manager of a mid-table Premier League team telling the world how easy it is to expose them.
United brought Ralf Rangnick in to change the pattern of the campaign but maybe it will be words of Ralph Hasenhuttl that finally spark a response from a group of players who look to be going through the motions until permanent change arrives in the summer.
Hasenhuttl's comments sparked plenty of debate on social media on Saturday night, only a small section of which was actually devoted to the content. There was just as much discussion as to whether he should have said it and outed another team's weakness in public.
There may come a point when United are thankful for it, however. Ralf might soon be thanking Ralph.
To remind anyone who has been hiding away since 3pm on Saturday - and that must be a temptation for United fans at the moment - this is what Hasenhuttl said: "It is not a big secret that when they lose the ball that the reverse gears are not the best from everybody."
So basically, they don't want to track back when possession is lost. "Not a big secret" suggests this is a conclusion almost every Premier League team is coming to when they face United at the moment.
For players who have won countless medals, are amongst the best paid in the division and are supposed to be playing for one of the biggest clubs in the world, that verdict should be a source of shame.
The comments from the Southampton manager led to a debate over the fitness of United's players and whether they have the physical capabilities to carry out Rangnick's instructions, but that is a red herring and even Rangnick admitted that fitness isn't a major concern right now.
"To be honest I don’t know if we are fit enough to play that way because as you said I came in the middle of the season, we had no pre-season and in essence, we had in total two weeks in total in between where we could train in a normal way," he said.
"If I watched in training what is being prepared for games I wouldn’t allow myself to say we are not fit enough to play like that.
"I don’t think this is the case because then we would also struggle in the last 20 minutes of the game and then in the game against Burnley and on Saturday we showed that we are physically able to play forward. I don’t think it’s a question of physicality with regard to fitness but yes it might well be.
"As I said we have are technical players, they like to play technical football but in the Premier League no matter against which team - and especially in games like those against Southampton - you cannot win games only in a technical way. You also have to show some physicality."
Rangnick was complaining about United's lack of physicality as far back as the end of December when his side were fortunate to leave St James' Park with a point against Newcastle. It clearly remains an issue.
This can't still be about fitness. Rangnick might have spoken early on about turning United into pressing monsters, but that ambition has been scaled back. This isn't a team pressing with the same intensity as Southampton, Manchester City or Liverpool. They pick their battles.
If they were chasing after every ball then you could understand a drop-off, but while the intensity of their play has increased since the end of November, it's been gradual rather than transformative.
The idea that this is a team that can't play backwards as well as they play forwards is about attitude rather than physicaility. There has to be a collective desire to put that work in, something that is missing for United at the moment.
At City and Liverpool the work rate of the front three is relentless. Mohamed Salah might be the best player in the league but he never stops running and if Trent Alexander-Arnold is out of position he will work backwards. There is a collective understanding that this is what it takes to be the best.
That is missing at United. It's not can't do it, it's won't do it. That is what Rangnick needs to change at the moment. Maybe there are improvements to be made in the structure of how United recover the ball at Carrington, but the simplicity with which Hasenhuttl dissected the most basic of issues should be embarrassing for a club with the ambitions of Manchester United.
