There is a timeless quality to Silva. He turns 33 next week, but still seems the player he was when he first arrived in Manchester almost nine years ago. He is no less sharp, no less lively, no less fluent: “always in motion,” as his one time Spain teammate, Javi Martinez, once said. He still wears his brilliance lightly. He still sees no need to indulge in ornament or ostentation. His is a genius for simple things, done to perfection.

To his coach, Pep Guardiola, Silva is a “joy” to work with; to his teammates, as Kyle Walker put it, he is an “example.” He has been a central figure at City ever since he arrived in 2010, but if anything he is even more integral now, charged with knitting together all of the complex passing patterns Guardiola has drummed into his players.

It is no surprise that it was in his absence — as well as that of Fernandinho, another of City’s old stagers — because of a leg injury that City lost to Crystal Palace and Leicester City, offering Liverpool daylight at the summit of the Premier League, and turning the two teams’ meeting at the Etihad Stadium on Thursday into a game Silva and his teammates must win. “If we drop points, it’s over, almost impossible,” Guardiola said this week.

Even City, with all its resources, lacks something in Silva’s absence. “He is one of the most incredible players in the world at playing in the pockets,” Guardiola said of his playmaker earlier this season. “He is maybe the strongest in the world in those spaces. We try to attack those spaces: he is a master of it. Few players can do it.”