[Beckenham. Thursday, 31 May 2018.]
What it was doing, it turned out, was something the English game had never seen before.
Managers leave clubs. That is old. Managers get poached, sacked, walk out, retire, go upstairs.
The game has a shape for every one of those and a back page ready to print. What the game did not have a shape for was a manager of a Premier League club, a man who had won a European trophy eight days ago, being lent to a national team for a World Cup, in the middle of a transfer window, eighteen days before a ball was kicked, and then handed back.
There was no precedent.
Nobody could reach for the last time this happened, because there was no last time.
A club had never done it in modern-day football.
