There was a very familiar if unexpected guest in the Stamford Bridge press box. Arsene Wenger was serving the second of his three-match touchline ban for verbally abusing Mike Dean and, with the directors’ box at Chelsea in the opposite stand to the dressing-rooms, one of the Premier League’s most iconic figures decided there was no option. He would join what he very wryly sometimes calls the “specialists”.

It put him within easy proximity of the players at half-time but, agonisingly, a distance of 20 yards from the dugouts. So while Antonio Conte was delivering his usual repertoire of touchline antics, Wenger was out of sight and ear-shot of his players and able only to send instructions via Jens Lehmann, who was seated to his immediate right.

Spending 90 minutes literally just a few feet from Wenger ensured a fascinating insight. Not for anything he said, but simply the magnified perspective provided by his body language. We hear so often of how football managers live every moment of a match that we become almost immune to the draining reality of that statement. Yet to see Wenger fidgeting with each pass, almost straining to make every tackle and, even surrounded by media, still letting out the occasional shout of encouragement or kick of frustration was to feel just how much it all means.