You can see it if you like,” says Michael Keane, taking off his sock and trainer to show the top of his right foot. There, right down the bone, runs a deep, livid scar. It is a reminder, for him, of last season and the most painful stretch of his young career. And for the observer of how we are too quick to judge players, without waiting to hear their full stories.

Keane has never spoken — until now — about the aftermath of the injury he sustained in September 2017; the pills he was given to take, having to play in a boot that was two sizes too big for him, being hospitalised with an infection that, had it not been caught just in