Manchester United’s new interim manager would have been watching closely as his soon-to-be players did their auditions at Stamford Bridge
As Cristiano Ronaldo prepared to come on to the pitch with an hour gone at Stamford Bridge, having already performed a dutiful kind of warm-up, idling along the touchline like a venerable old don taking a stroll on the chamomile lawns, a large book of laminated diagrams was waved in front of his nose.
Ronaldo, to his credit, made a decent show of having a look. Two decades into one of the great elite level careers, CR7 is not too proud for your diagrams. But there might have been a temptation to grab that folder and scour the hand written notes, to look for a sign, a prognosis of his own future in this mid-season revolution.
