David Moyes and Manchester United just cannot seem to catch a break at the moment. Just one minute away from booking a place in the Capital One Cup final against cross town rivals Manchester City, and suddenly in the blink of an eye everything went pear shaped with Sunderland eking out a win at Old Trafford via the always dramatic penalty shootout.
Jonny Evans had seemingly headed United to a 1-0 victory and with it a title-clash at Wembley, only for two late goals, one for either side, to take the tie into the shootout.
The penalties turned out to be a bit of a nightmare for United, with just one player - Darren Fletcher - actually finding the mark.
Moyes this time around admitted United had not done enough against Sunderland, a side struggling in the relegation places, to warrant victory.
"We probably haven't played well enough tonight to merit going through, but we were getting there. We had hung on," Moyes told MUTV after the 3-3 aggregate defeat on Wednesday.
"We had defended well enough in the end to make sure we were going to see the game out at 1-0. But it changed, and credit to the lads. They got themselves a goal again.
"But I've got no complaints. I just don't think we had a level of performance that merited winning the game more comfortably, and that's what I was looking for.
"If we'd gone through I'd have been disappointed in the performance, but obviously I'm doubly disappointed because we didn't get through. With a minute to go, we were in the final.
"We didn't play well enough tonight and Sunderland came here and deservedly got themselves into the final."
With United going through on away goals courtesy the Evans goal, Phil Bardsley snuck one through the unusually porous hands of David De Gea to give Sunderland the advantage with just one minute remaining in extra time, before Javier Hernandez found a late second goal for United just before the final whistle.
Danny Welbeck, Adnan Januzaj, Phil Jones and Rafael all missed their spot-kicks however, handing Sunderland a memorable victory.
"We were terrible at penalty kicks, terrible," Moyes said. "Maybe on another day we'd have had a different set of penalty takers. But that's what we had available to us on the night. It just didn't quite work.
"I think the bigger disappointment was how we played in the game."
Fletcher also could not hide his disappointment at letting the game slip away. "It is a mental [battle]. The whole game -- although I don't think we played well -- we dug in and we battled and I really did think we were going to grind it out and go through," the skipper for the day said. "But ultimately we haven't done it and penalties are a bit of a lottery... but we should still be disappointed with the execution of our penalty kicks.
"I thought the momentum [from Hernandez's goal] might have taken us through but ultimately it didn't. To be out, then to hit Sunderland with a sucker punch, I thought we'd be in the ascendancy going into the shootout. But they only scored two penalties to go through and that's disappointing.
"At Old Trafford if it goes to penalty kicks and we only score one, that's disappointing, there's no denying it."
