There was a point last season when Juan Mata feared he might be leaving Manchester United; that his career there might be over. It was not a comfortable thought. “To be honest, I didn’t know. I was not 100 per cent sure. I know what I felt – which was to stay - but I didn’t know what would happen,” Mata admits.

“I wanted to stay here because I would not forgive myself to leave with a feeling of ‘yeah, but… what?’ I didn’t want that. You know it has been a challenging time. But I am quite proud of my mentality. It’s been difficult in some moments not playing, out of the team, the team not doing great, of critics, for everyone. It would have been easier for me to give up and say ‘it’s true that I came to this club in a difficult moment and it’s not meant to be. Bye’.

“No, I’m proud of saying ‘I want to make it happen, I want to fight for big trophies, I want to be here when we win’. And I want to be here when we bring this club back to where it belongs.”

It was in January 2014 that Mata joined United for a then club record £37million in an extraordinary move from Chelsea, where he had won the Champions League, arriving by helicopter at the club’s training ground and being a high-profile coup, a desperately-needed marquee transfer for Sir Alex Ferguson’s ill-fated successor, David Moyes. It means the Spanish midfielder is now the longest-serving signing at United since Ferguson retired and having agreed a two-year extension at the end of the last campaign, with the option for a further 12 months, could well end his career at Old Trafford.