Back in August, after a clash of heads with his colleague Idrissa Gana Gueye, Everton’s robust centre-back Michael Keane was carried off the pitch on a stretcher during his team’s draw with Bournemouth. That was an uncomfortable enough episode for the player, but it was the later assessment that really brought him up short. An X-ray revealed he had sustained a hairline fracture of his skull.

“When they first told me that, I was worried,” he admits, as he speaks at Everton’s training complex ahead of Sunday’s Merseyside derby.

“The first 10 days were pretty horrendous. I couldn’t move without the room spinning. I was sat at home not doing anything, [any exposure to] light would make my head all fuzzy. I had to stay still.” For a moment he feared that his run of bad luck – he had suffered an injury the previous season which had ruled him out of selection for England’s World Cup squad – was becoming something of a pattern.

“You have to rest for a certain time, you can’t play for two weeks, can’t head a ball, you have to stick to them guidelines,” he says of the concussion protocol that came into force immediately following his diagnosis.