Sometimes in order to appreciate where someone is, you really have to understand where it was they started.
So listening to Ian Wright telling a story about his early days at Crystal Palace recently was instructive and moving. Wright was 21 when taken from non-League football to join Palace but, having left school at 14, was younger than that in many ways.
‘One guy made my first couple of years a f***ing nightmare,’ Wright told the Stick to Football podcast. ‘He was a bully. You know when you go for the communal food? I’m three months off the building site and I don’t know what’s going on.