Gagged on Zoom and late night emails - dealing with Manchester United players

The Hawthorns, eight days before Christmas, 2016. Manchester United have just won to a soundtrack of Five Cantonas and their in-form defender stops in the mixed zone.

He had led United out for their warm-up and was the first to consult Jose Mourinho after Zlatan Ibrahimovic's second goal.

"It looks like you're one of the manager's leaders out there?"

The response is so monosyllabic it is not even worth transcribing. It did not make the embargoed copy and the audio is entombed in a dictaphone gathering dust somewhere.

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Five months later, it is apparent why Phil Jones was so curt. After United's lethargic performance in a 2-0 defeat at Arsenal in May 2017, this correspondent wrote Jones "appeared as awkward as Diane Abbott during an interview".

The Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington had that week made an excruciating appearance on Nick Ferrari's LBC show, claiming the recruitment of 10,000 police officers would cost £300,000. It was not so much a car crash as a pile-up.

Some might have laughed at the flippancy of likening Jones to Ms Abbott, some might not have. It is not a parallel one would draw now. Ms Abbott is subjected to obscene abuse and was suspended by Labour in April after crassly suggesting Jewish people encounter similar prejudice to "redheads".

Jones complained about the comment to a United press officer, who vowed that access would not be granted to me on the club's upcoming pre-season tour. That was nipped in the bud once the club's then-director of communications got wind of the pettiness.

Days after Jones alerted the United media staff, he approached a colleague at open training to decry the quip. You have to hope for Jones's sake