Chris Hargreaves was made United’s skipper, in the absence of James Constable, at Luton, but he may get to keep the captain’s armband.

It’s something Chris Wilder says he and his staff are thinking about, though no overall decision has yet been made.

“I think Chris has these leadership qualities, and so does Rhys (Day), I just wanted somebody who was right in the middle of the action,” said the manager.

“We saw with Alfie Potter’s booking, when Luton’s Kevin Nicholls ran 40 yards to get him booked, you need people with experience in there, and both Rhys and Chris have that.

“I thought Rhys and Jake Wright were absolutely superb late on, getting blocks in, and Chris did what everybody knows he brings to the football club.

“From the middle of the park, Chris can influence things far more than a goalkeeper or centre forward, and maybe a centre half.

“We’ll have a look at it. Beano’s [James Constable] done great. I thought it settled Beano down being captain, his booking last Saturday was really unfortunate.”

Hargreaves showed great desire and drive on Tuesday night, several times tracking back to make superb defensive interventions.

But there will have to be the consideration too that he is 38 in May and may not be able to play twice a week every week.

He admitted that the manner of defeat hurt the players, but they will quickly get over it.

“We should have been walking away from here winning, shouldn’t we?

“We maybe turned off at the death. If you’re going to get sucker-punched at a corner OK, but don’t lose it – yet the second one’s just a freak goal.

“Although it is devastating, there were positives.

“The lads are going to be hurting for a couple of days, but you’ve got to get over it and go and batter the next opponents on Saturday.

“What annoys me is they scored and more time is suddenly created. I asked the ref before the first one ‘How long’s left?’ and he said one minute. Then the goal is scored and there’s suddenly two minutes left.

“You’ve got to defend all the way and we didn’t, we lost the man at the end for the first one, which isn’t good enough.

“The second one was a freak – what can you do? Don’t give away a corner for a start. It was sickening.

“We had a tremendous following, everything was perfect until three minutes of madness.”