But a combination of a spirited Derby response and a largely abject display from Bruce's side provided an enthralling 90 minutes, as the visitors pulled back two goals by half-time before ultimately falling short in a rescue mission dubbed 'Istanhull' by their supporters, a nod to Liverpool's glorious escape act in the 2005 Champions League final.
Before kick-off, Old Trafford was buzzing with the news of Juan Mata's imminent arrival from Chelsea - and a largely abject performance from Moyes's team was the perfect illustration of why United are prepared to break the club record transfer fee to land the Spaniard.
Consequently, Islamists' polities have largely been abject, often tragic failures in providing a viable collective life and sound governance.
They have driven an economic system that has largely banished abject poverty and infectious disease (from the developed world, at least).
In a few minutes, Obama would arrive in Colorado for a campaign stop, followed by another in Nevada — two critical states that neither of the previous two Democratic nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry, came all that close to winning, largely because of their abject failure to connect with white men, especially lower- and middle-class men in rural and exurban counties.
These abject-yet-inorganic basslines largely stemmed from a single music-making program, Massive.
If we judge NAFTA by sound bites, the jury in the court of public opinion has largely rendered its verdict -- it is an abject failure.
But the United States has also swithered in its commitments, welshed on its debts, stymied the efforts of its allies and, most alarmingly, shown an abject terror of losing any of its soldiers' lives in combat.This terror, born largely of experience in Somalia, helps to explain the most disgraceful episode of the 1990s, indeed of the second half of the 20th century.
It may be an unfair generalization, but it seems to me that China is largely a nation of relatively well-off consumerist city folk who are one generation removed from abject rural poverty.
We recently witnessed as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, before a largely white audience, offered a description of communities as a bastion of failing schools, high unemployment and abject poverty that dwell in war zones.
That was abject cowardice".
