Hand of Ralf Rangnick can be seen already in the dropping of Ronaldo | Barney Ronay

Manchester United’s new interim manager would have watched on and seen players like Jadon Sancho in effect doing auditions

As Cristiano Ronaldo prepared to enter the pitch with an hour gone at Stamford Bridge, having performed a dutiful kind of warm-up, meandering along the touchline like a venerable old don taking a stroll on the college lawn, a large book of laminated diagrams was waved in front of his nose.

Ronaldo, to his credit, made a 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 handwritten notes, to look for a sign, a prognosis of his own future in this peculiar, mid-season evolution.

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