It is difficult to think of a more ‘no dickheads’ player than Mason Mount, with Jonny Evans arriving a fortnight later.

That was the same summer in which Dean Henderson was their biggest sale. A phenomenal keeper and Crystal Palace stalwart he may have become, but one can absolutely see how he might have developed a certain difficult reputation at Old Trafford.

Mason Greenwood, by the way, was offloaded the following year.

Gilbert Enoka, the mental performance coach credited with transforming the All Blacks with what shouldn’t have been a particularly ground-breaking strategy of just not employing complete arses, once explained:

“A dickhead makes everything about them. They are people who put themselves ahead of the team, people who think they’re entitled to things, expect the rules to be different for them, people operating deceitfully in the dark, or being unnecessarily loud about their work.”

There is precisely no reason to believe Kobbie Mainoo falls into that category. He has received his 212 of a possible 1440 Premier League minutes this season with public grace and humility, keeping his counsel and only privately expressing a desire to leave on loan for more playing opportunities in a World Cup year.

He has been a model professional and one of the better players even in a mere 29-minute cameo in the absurd draw against Bournemouth.

But if you are the company you keep, Mainoo would do well to heed the warnings of his former academy equal. While Jordan Mainoo-Hames is not even vaguely on the same level as Roberto Garnacho in terms of brotherly bother, what transpired at Old Trafford feels like a slippery slope in that unhelpful direction.

It did not feel like an act born of half-brotherly love or support. It seemed like little more than a publicity stunt from a former Love Island contestant turned influencer. And considering how Mainoo himself has handled the situation, it is tough to imagine him sanctioning, condoning or welcoming it.

Over the weekend, Ruben Amorim had said he was “completely open” to discussing the player’s options, that he would “be really pleased if Kobbie comes to talk to me about” his future because “I just want my players happy and I understand that every individual has their goals”.

The manager added that “frustration doesn’t help anybody”.

Yet frustration is all that can really be felt when Amorim’s words were so quickly undercut by someone sitting front and centre in the Old Trafford stands before the game wearing a ‘FREE KOBBIE MAINOO’ t-shirt – which coincidentally is available for under £20 and is supposedly low on stock if the website now shilling it is to be believed.

That made everything about Mainoo. That put him ahead of the team, made him seem entitled, that the rules for him were different. It was certainly unnecessarily loud in the tabloid ‘speaks volumes’ sense.

It was a noise Manchester United, Amorim and indeed Mainoo could have done without; the game itself was raucous enough.

Alejandro Garnacho, entirely predictably, has liked one of the offending posts, presumably with a tingle of nostalgia. It remains to be seen whether his brother believes Mainoo to have been ‘thrown under the bus’. But even just a brief reminder of the sideshow they encouraged before jumping ship to Chelsea in the summer should discourage Camp Mainoo from venturing further down a path that leads only to more problems.

After the issues with the Garnachos and to a far, far, far lesser but still relevant extent the Rashfords, it might be time for Manchester United to add a brother-based appendix to the ‘no dickheads’ policy, with Mainoo’s kin the first case in point.

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