Transport for Greater Manchester must be kicking itself.

After missing its original deadline to open the new Metrolink extension to south Manchester, it seemed to have a policy of avoiding mention of specific dates to avoid having to “get it wrong again”, as MP John Leech put it.

Then, perhaps stung by the amount of criticism and public pressure being brought to bear, it grandly announced it would all be open by the end of June, earning positive front-page coverage in the local press and elsewhere.

Now, its original fears have come to pass, and it has had to shame-facedly apologise and say it’s going to miss this new deadline too.

It hasn’t gone unnoticed that in their most recent announcement, alongside words like ‘disappointment’ and ‘delay’ and ‘apologise’, is the word ‘Thales’ – a small but significant bit of buck-passing to the engineering contractors, which it hasn’t done before.

A lesson in the importance of outperforming expectations, rather than setting high benchmarks and failing: a lesson it had already learnt, and then forgot.