When waving goodbye to an adoring Manchester City crowd for the final time, David Silva did so regarded as quite probably the greatest footballer to have worn the club’s colours. Across a decade in the English top-flight he had laughed in the face of past-Premier League perceptions, helping to rewrite a narrative in which touch and technique had once been placed behind strength and speed. The early inceptions of the Premier League had seen diminutive foreign footballers often wrote off upon arrival, deemed unsuited for the blood-and-thunder of English football and cold, rainy nights at unfashionable destinations. ...