You can be exposed to the crazy economics of top-flight football for so long that the unfathomably vast salaries just become routine: a casual reference point in the game's vocabulary.
But when Jordan Henderson mounted a flawed, awkward, sometimes excruciating defence of his decision to play in Saudi Arabia, it was the time to pause and ask the question. Why Jordan? Why, on a Premier League salary of £190,000 a week, did you really need to trash your reputation for a few million more?
He didn't seem to see the reaction coming. Didn't appear to compute for a moment, that the various pretty words he's uttered about inclusion and diversity and rainbow laces - 'I've never liked to see people ostracised or bullied, it's how I was brought up' - would suddenly seem hollow and baseless.