For a moment the World Cup suggested that we might be about to enter a new phase of footballing fun; an era of upbeat, cheery, good-humoured entertainment. And then the pre-season arrived, smacking us collectively round the face with a dose of depressing reality, doing its best to smother all hint of optimism.

Over in America Jose Mourinho, his team instructed to play football almost as dour and humourless as his public persona, appears to be on a one-man campaign to extinguish the light. Meanwhile, Everton are doing their best to demonstrate that the game has abandoned all connection with financial reason as they secure the services of Richarlison, a player unlikely to feature in a most-wanted list constructed around his own kitchen table, for an eye-melting sum of £50 million.

But even this is as nothing in deflating the mood compared to the news emanating from Scotland. Normally the revelation that Aberdeen’s striker Adam Rooney had signed for a club in England would barely raise an eyebrow. That is what has happened for generations; there has long been a hosepipe sucking the ambitious down to where the money lies.

But the balance between the two footballing economies used to be thought of as the one defined by the likes of Virgil van Dijk leaving the persistent champions Celtic to join Southampton, a middling Premier League team.