There were no prizes for guessing who the eye was drawn to at Manchester United’s first training session on their pre-season tour of the US. Romelu Lukaku’s projected £90 million transfer from Everton had only been announced a little over an hour before United’s players took to the field at UCLA’s Drake Stadium and were put through their paces over the course of an unrelenting 100 minutes, the first of two training sessions that day.

If all the add-ons in Lukaku’s deal are met, the Belgium striker will supplant new team-mate and friend, Paul Pogba, as the world’s most expensive footballer. But even the most costly players are not immune to one or two nerves and those were evident in an uncertain first few touches from Lukaku until he settled down and before long was fizzing passes into feet during a drill with Pogba, Marcus Rashford, Ander Herrera, Jesse Lingard and Andreas Pereira, the pace of which other groups could not match.