Danny endured a good eighteen months of this piecemeal dismantlement of his footballing identity. His game became cautious, inexpressive, functional. At a certain point, he could tell management were no longer even watching him, not really. They had ended their concern in him and were only keeping him around because you needed raw numbers, you needed bodies of a sufficient standard out there on the pitch so that the handful of lads who were going to make it could keep developing. And that’s what Danny had become; a living training cone, one of those hundreds of panting, ­lead-­footed boys he had run rings around, with the happy, ­cold-­blooded guilelessness of the prodigy, all through his childhood.

Early April, as the end of the academy season loomed, the coaches scheduled Danny in for a meeting. JJ caught a ­last-­minute flight over and was in the room when the assistant youth coach informed Danny that the club was not going to offer him a senior contract. The coach tried to give Danny the placating spiel they must give every lad they cut loose. Danny stopped the man short, told him it was fine, that he’d known it was coming.