It costs nothing to be polite. Eberechi Eze glides through football’s over-heated madhouse with the same mannerly, understated elegance he displays on the pitch. Like Alexander Isak, Eze is at the centre of a hot transfer story that has negative consequences for the selling team. Unlike Isak, he can read a room

However Isak’s ruinous position at Newcastle United is resolved, the Swede has for all time lost the affection of the Toon Army. Whilst the short-termism that afflicts the football mentality and the embrace of his next team will protect him in the near term, he might find the damage done at St James’s Park rises like damp to claim him in his dotage.

Isak and Eze are walking the same tripwire that is the power relation between club and player. But ultimately it matters how you trea

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