Jurgen Klopp has a special affinity for players who can dodge injury. And for a long time at Liverpool, Nathaniel Clyne was a player he held in particularly high regard.
'The manager has called me a machine in the past,' Clyne said in 2016. 'I'm not entirely sure why, it's probably because I play in loads of games and rarely get injured or come off with knocks.'
He was almost certainly correct. In the early stage of his Liverpool revolution, Klopp had to made hard calls on the players who did not have the physicality to enforce the high-octane pressing system he was to oversee.
For example, promising midfielder Joao Teixeira, then 21, was sick at the end of Klopp's first ever training session at Liverpool in October 2015 and soon enough moved on to pastures new.
But Clyne started Klopp's first game, a 0-0 draw at Tottenham, and pretty much every game that followed over the next 18 months. By May 2017, when Liverpool secured a Champions League place under Klopp for the first time, no one had played under the German more than Clyne had.
Nobody could have predicted that his Liverpool career would meander to the extent that it has, even when a youngster called Trent Alexander-Arnold made his first forays into the first-team in 2016-17.
Clyne had only been a Liverpool player for a few months himself when Brendan Rodgers was sacked and replaced by Klopp in 2015, but he didn't miss a beat. In his first two seasons at Anfield, Clyne played an astonishing 93 times. But since that day in 2017 when Liverpool beat Middlesbrough 3-0 to seal a top four place, he has only featured 10 more times and isn't going to play again in Liverpool red.
His contract, worth around £70,000-a-week, expires on July 1 and Liverpool are not even offering him a short-term extension for him to complete the season at the club.
He has been training alone at Kirkby, where Liverpool's academy are based, while the first time rebuild their sharpness at Melwood before attempting to seal Premier League glory.
Clyne 29, will make a lonely exit long before the season ends and when, as seems inevitable, Liverpool lift the Premier League, he could forgiven for having a moment to wonder what happened to prevent him being at the heart of the celebrations.
Back in the summer of 2017, injury hampered his involvement in pre-season, a time Klopp considers essential for building up fitness in a player.
It paved the way for Alexander-Arnold to earn a sustained run in the team and, via a stunning free-kick that he scored in a Champions League qualifier against Hoffenheim, he cemented his place in Klopp's first-choice side.
Of course, there is no shame in Clyne losing his place to a talent like Alexander-Arnold. But depending on an 18-year-old for the duration of that season would not have been wise and Klopp would certainly have used a player of Clyne's experience throughout the campaign.
As it was, his fitness meant he only made five appearances, two of which were starts and while the pre-season of 2018 was a chance for a reset, it soon proved to be more of the same.
He left a pre-season training camp in the United States for the birth of his second child and when he rejoined the squad at their base in France, he sustained another injury that meant he was playing catch-up once again.
Remarkably that season, he had played only once when Klopp threw him in at the deep end for a game against Manchester United at Anfield in December 2018. Liverpool ran out 3-1 winners and soon after, Jose Mourinho was sacked as United manager.
'Clyney - first game of the season and I was sure he couldn't play 90 minutes but he adapted brilliantly,' Klopp beamed after the match. 'A big squad isn't there to make each member of the squad happy.
'The best case is that everybody is 100 per cent fit and performs at the highest level. The best example of that is Nathaniel Clyne. Since I have been here, he has played 100 or so games, then he got a bad injury and was out. Trent emerged, then Joe got fit, and the situation changed.
'You can train at the highest level, but you have to wait. Is that nice? No. Is it the job? Yes. That's how it is. Because Clyney did that and trained at a really high level then he could perform like he did tonight, just amazing.'
Clyne played three more time for Liverpool that December before joining Bournemouth on loan for a sustained run of first-team football. When he returned, he was training in a group of Champions League winners at Liverpool and in a pre-season friendly against Borussia Dortmund, Clyne sustained an ACL injury that has ultimately brought the curtain down on his five years at the club.
But Clyne should not be short of offers once he officially departs. There are plenty of miles left in the tank at 29 and, with a lot of clubs counting the financial cost of coronavirus, he could find himself in extra demand as a free agent.
He has 14 England caps to his name, as well. He might be Liverpool's forgotten man but 'the machine' will have plenty of fire in his belly to make up for lost time when he joins his next team.