Not so long ago, there was one of those fluorescent player of the match trophies sat on a ledge around the Etihad Stadium’s tunnel area for months on end. Nobody touched it, nobody claimed it.
It just remained there. Unmoved, unloved. The weeks and games went by, hundreds of footballers wandering past. Set some music in the background and it would have looked at home as the protagonist in a morose Christmas advert.