"I had no one in Manchester apart from my PlayStation"

Aaron Wan-Bissaka was a young man rated among the country's most promising footballers when Manchester United came calling in the summer of 2019.

- MALIK OUZIA

He was described, on his arrival from Crystal Palace, by manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær as "one of the best upcoming defenders in the Premier League", at a time when England could claim to have half of the top-10 right-backs in Europe.

He was, at an initial £45 million, the fifth-most expensive player United had ever signed and remains now the priciest ever uncapped Englishman. But really, he was by his own admission still a 21-year-old boy, not yet 18 months on from his senior debut and about to swap the communal security of a tight south London club for the lonely spotlight of perhaps the world's most scrutinised.

"It was difficult," Wan-Bissaka says. "Very difficult. I went [to Manchester] on my own and it was my first time moving away from home. I had no one up there, apart from my PlayStation." It was quieter than London - "and I like quiet," he says - but in its own way more overbearing, too, for the lack of anonymity and escape.

"Because Manchester's smaller, everyone's aware of everything that's happening," he says. "You have to be mentally strong to avoid the negative stuff it comes with." Early in his time at United, he felt so isolated that he would travel back to London after training most afternoons, to spend a few hours with friends and family, before returning to Manchester the same night and restarting the cycle the following day.