Leicester City produced a performance which was a pale imitation of the side that has been so impressive in their climb to the top of the Championship.
Their success so far this season has been built on energetic, high-tempo performances but, against Crystal Palace, that zip was evidently missing from the very first minute.
City boss Nigel Pearson said afterwards that too many of his players were off form, and that was certainly the case. In fact, very few of them could come out of the game with much credit.
The decision to make captain Wes Morgan the man of the match is probably the easiest decision of the season as he stood out among team-mates who looked completely flat.
There was no shortage of effort on the part of the boys in blue, but it was one of those days when nothing really came off.
On other days, Kasper Schmeichel would claim the corner that led to the first goal when he collided with his own team-mates.
And whoever was given the task of tracking Peter Ramage for the second five minutes later would have stuck to his man.
And Danny Drinkwater would have been able to influence a game that completely passed him by, while Anthony Knockaert's touches and clever flicks would have come off instead of gifting possession back to Palace so frequently.
In the battle of the two team's creative players, Wilfried Zaha, probably the best player currently in the Championship, won hands down.
David Nugent could have had a hat-trick on another day. He could not direct Jamie Vardy's cross past Julian Speroni early on and then Owen Garvan scrambled two of his efforts off the line, one legally, the other illegally.
In short, there were just too many of the City players who were not at the races, for whatever reason.
During the course of a season as long as this Championship campaign, you are going to get bad days at the office, and this was a bad day at work for Pearson's men.
But a test of any side's true credentials is how frequently these days come. Although they have suffered three defeats on the road at the start of the season, in each of those games you could not really say that City played poorly. As Pearson as frequently pointed out, they were always in those games.
However, although City were never really out of this game either, their performance level did not inspire belief that they could complete a comeback, although Andy King did kindle some hope at the death with a superbly placed header from Paul Konchesky's cross.
Up to this point, City have been impressive and they deserve credit. No-one should be going overboard after one poor showing.
But they do need to rediscover their true selves quickly, ahead of two very tough away games coming up.
