Even as life on Manchester United’s bench started to pall, even as the frustration started to bubble up inside him and his patience began to wear thin, Javier Hernández never so much as contemplated taking what he always saw as the easy, lazy path. “It is easy to say you don’t want to train, to tweet or put a picture on Instagram because you are not playing, to fight with a manager,” he says.

“The easy path is for people who don’t care. Some people fight in a bad way, but that is not how I see the world. It is harder to be professional, to be patient, but that is what I like. You have to swallow it. You have to keep working even