They do say that when Dimitri Seluk alleged in 2014 that the birthday greetings offered to his client Yaya Toure by Manchester City were unforgivably low-key, the player himself had never even mentioned the issue before it was pushed to the forefront by an agent eager to create a scene.

That was soon after City’s second Premier League title, when Toure was still one of the main men and long before his public casting-out this week, that has left him very much free at weekends to do what he likes, be it shopping, golf, cinema, or playing Pokemon Go with Bastian Schweinsteiger.

Now, as in 2014, Seluk, with his declaration of war on Pep Guardiola, has delivered Toure the kind of problems that would be grounds for the end of an agent-client relationship. Now, as then, Toure’s attitude towards the problem has been ambiguous to say the least.