A mid-October game at Sheffield United isn't normally seen as critical, but for Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag the match may be a defining one.
The Red Devils are 10th in the Premier League coming out of the international break, and have hardly looked the side that Ten Hag led to a third-place finish last season.
Instead, United have struggled both domestically and in Europe, where they are at the bottom of Group A with a pair of losses to start their Champions League campaign.
In other words, things are grim at Old Trafford, and one former Man United player believes the team's upcoming game against the last-place Blades could have a lot of influence on just how hot Ten Hag's seat is.
"I'm not a manager, so it's very difficult to wager how much time Erik ten Hag will be given," Dwight Yorke told Stocklytics. "I think he's bought time due to what he achieved in his first season and the fact he won the League Cup and finished third in the Premier League.
"I think that, from what I've found from being at United, you need to go into the next season trying to better what you did in the previous one. To be at the top of the tree, you need to enhance your performance every season.
"Ten Hag did some things that, in my personal opinion, I would have done differently, though that's easy to say in hindsight."
Yorke points to poor performances against teams that United should be beating as a major factor being the growing pressure on Ten Hag, placing at least some of the blame at the feet of the manager for some of those results.
"When you factor that in with the difficult start they've made to this season, you can see that the manager is on the back foot straight away," he said. "It's starting to snowball and you can see the position the club is in.
"People will point out the injuries in the squad and how Ten Hag hasn't been able to field his best team, but people aren't that naive and they can see what's going on at the club. It's all well documented, even though we don't know everything behind the scenes.
"There have been games that Ten Hag should have won, and there are plenty of winnable games, but the ones where he's continued to lose against lesser teams have caused him problems as the manager."
With the talent on the Red Devils squad, Yorke feels the team should be doing better. However, the former Premier League Golden Boot winner thinks that Ten Hag's fate is in his own hands — if United can start winning then questions about his job security will lessen.
"The games look winnable due to the squad United have, and every victory will give him time, but he can't afford to lose those kinds of games and then expect the people to be on his side," Yorke said.
"The Brentford result (a 2-1 United victory on Oct. 7) would have toned that discussion down, but United are 10th in the league and are bottom of their Champions League group - that won't resonate with the fans no matter how good of a manager he is!"