Football

before someone else:

Which makes a pleasant change from last season. After being fast tracked by his great mentor Carlo Ancelotti, McEachran's career had seemed to stall suddenly with a loan at Swansea under Brendan Rodgers – a fellow paid-up subscriber to the Barcelona school of football –ending in unexpected disappointment. "It was one of those things in life which just didn't work out," he says. Pressed on what he learned in south Wales, the reply is "Nothing". A question about his opinion of the current Liverpool manager provokes an uncharacteristically coy "I'll pass on that".