What would happen if Tottenham lost Harry Kane to injury for several months? Or if the Green Bay Packers had to make do without Aaron Rodgers? (Answer: it happened last season and it wasn’t good.) What if Taylor Swift had to write chart-topping bangers without songwriter and Superproducer™ extraordinaire Max Martin? Those earworms won’t produce themselves, TayTay fans!



In sports, and evidently in youth-oriented pop music, losing your best player is usually bad news. Doubt creeps in, productivity lowers, and form starts to dip in the absence of the glue that held the winning operation together.



Pangs of fear may have struck Manchester City fans last week when they learned 2017-18 player of the year Kevin De Bruyne is to be out of action for around three months with a lateral collateral ligament lesion in his right knee. According to Pep Guardiola, the Belgian has paid the price for a lack of rest. “Human beings have a limit,” he...