Christian Pulisic, Kevin De Bruyne & eight outcasts who reignited their careers to give hope to Man Utd pariah Jadon Sancho

Pep Guardiola commands the respect of his peers throughout the football world, but one man who seemed determined to undermine him was Zlatan during their time together at Barcelona.

Ibrahimovic lasted just a single season under the revered tactician as their relationship quickly deteriorated. The Swede was scathing of how Guardiola deployed him in his side, writing in his autobiography: “It started well but then [Lionel] Messi started to talk. He wanted to play in the middle, not on the wing, so the system changed from 4-3-3 to 4-5-1. I was sacrificed and no longer had the freedom on the pitch I need to succeed." He added: “You bought a Ferrari, but you drive it like a Fiat.”

Despite being at odds with his manager, Ibrahimovic would still have 34 goal involvements come the end of the season, but the damage was already done. He would, of course, go on to have a glittering career, firing AC Milan to a Scudetto the following year and hoarding trophies at Paris Saint-Germain before repeating the trick with he Rossoneri.

It seems completely unfathomable now that assist king De Bruyne could ever fall out of favour given the world-class quality he possesses, but that's the fate that befell him when working under infamously volatile manager Jose Mourinho at Chelsea.

Having returned from a successful loan at Wolfsburg in 2013, De Bruyne swiftly found himself out of favour. Shedding light on the situation in The Players' Tribune in 2019, the Belgian said: "After the fourth game, that was it. I was on the bench and I never really got a chance again. I didn’t get an explanation. I was just out of favour for some reason.

"I was completely honest. I said, 'I feel like the club doesn’t really want me here. I want to play football. I’d rather you sell me'."

The rest, as they say, is history, with De Bruyne returning to Wolfsburg in January 2014 and going on to become one of the best midfielders on the planet following his return to England with Manchester City, where he has won everything there is to win.

Although he largely only had himself to blame, Lukaku's dream, £100 million ($127m) Chelsea comeback swiftly became a nightmare as he fell foul of temperamental former head coach Thomas Tuchel.

A long goal drought preceded the release of an ill-advised interview with Italian media where he questioned how he was being used by his manager and professed his love for former club Inter. He would never recover from that, having alienated Tuchel, the fans and likely some of his team-mates.

Following an unsuccessful loan return to Inter, where he managed to irk another whole fanbase with his flirtations with Juventus in the summer, Lukaku returned to Chelsea before being sent out to Roma. While he not the same explosive striker that persuaded the Blues to part with nine figures in 2021, with 15 goals to his name, the Belgian has shown his best form in some time.

There was never likely to be a way back for Greenwood at Manchester United after he was accused of attempted rape, coercive and controlling behaviour and assault, even after the charges were dropped in February 2023.

After a seemingly muddled internal inquiry into whether the academy product could be reintegrated, it was eventually decided that Greenwood would be loaned out rather than sold, with his contract due to expire in 2025.

The 22-year-old subsequently moved to La Liga for the season, joining Getafe. Despite spending so long away from the pitch having been suspended by United in January 2022, the forward has performed surprisingly well - contributing a combined nine goals and assists for a mid-table side.

It has been a long road back to his peak for Aubameyang, who has had to restore his reputation twice in quick succession after becoming persona non grata at both Arsenal and Chelsea.

After a productive spell at Barcelona, he was signed by the Blues just a week before Tuchel was relieved of his duties and barely featured from that moment onwards, with his Champions League knockouts squad omission as sign of what was to come. His dad has since described his time at Chelsea as a nightmare.

The 34-year-old inevitably sought pastures new in the summer and is now enjoying a renaissance on the south coast of France with Marseille, where he has made 20 goal contributions in just 27 appearances to far in 2023-24.

One of a number of Chelsea players whose careers at Stamford Bridge simply fizzled out during the nightmarish 2022-23 campaign. Although injuries didn't help, Pulisic - who never truly hit the heights in west London - became a peripheral figure in the second half of the season and it was increasingly evident that he would form part of a summer clear-out.

That is what came to pass, and a move to AC Milan beckoned. Everyone knew Pulisic had more to offer given the opportunity, and that has proven to be the case in a Rossoneri side that has lacked inspiration at times.

With plenty of the season still to play, the United States star is into double figures for combined goals and assists, even landing the Serie A Player of the Month award for December.

A cautionary tale given the now-31-year-old finds himself without a club and facing the real threat of his career fizzling out prematurely, but Lingard was vindicated in his decision to first leave Manchester United in January 2021.

He was frozen out by ex-United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in the second half of 2019-20, and the situation didn't change in the first part of the next campaign - which Lingard has claimed was never explained to him. “I don’t know why I wasn’t playing. I don’t know what the problem was, whether it was politics or whatever," he said in 2022.

"I didn’t even ask. I’d rather that someone out of respect for me being there that long told me ‘this is why you’re not playing’, but I never got that. It was false promises. When you’re working hard in training and don’t play at the end of it, it’s very frustrating."

His short-term move to West Ham in 2021 goes down as one of the most-productive ever, with the England international making 14 goal contributions in just 16 Premier League appearances. Unfortunately, though, it's been all downhill from there.

Sanchez only realised the gravity of his egregious move to United from Arsenal when it was already too late. Speaking in 2020, he said: "Sometimes there are things that you don't realise until you get there, and I remember the first training session I had, I realised a lot of things. After the session I got home and I told my family and my agent 'can you not rip up the contract to go back to Arsenal?"

Of course, that's not how transfers work, and Sanchez's bad first day at work foreshadowed a miserable one-and-a-half season spell for the attacker at Old Trafford.

The Chilean would join Inter on an initial loan in 2019, which was made permanent following an impressive campaign. The next season, he helped the Nerazzurri to their first Scudetto in a decade, and he seems to have found a home at San Siro after a spell at Marseille.