Arteta, though, accepts that his regular visits to Barcelona – where he spent much of his recuperation period under the watchful gaze of renowned knee surgeon Ramon Cugat – meant he was in the right place when his final problem occurred.

“I was travelling a lot between here and Spain, I went about 14 or 15 times and was there that long I made a lot of friends in the hospital,” he says. “It was just very fortunate that when the knee did swell up I was still in Barcelona at the time.

“I was due to come back, but I’d only started doing some running that week and he wanted me to stay on a bit longer to see if there was any reaction from the impact, and it’s lucky I did.

“If I’d already been in England I wouldn’t have been able to fly back and would have had to wait until he was free to come over, so it would have put things back even more. I was really lucky that I could see him straight away.”

Arteta made his long-awaited return as a substitute in the FA Cup defeat to Birmingham City earlier this month and, after a 50-minute run-out from the bench in the Anfield derby, has started the home wins over Chelsea and Sporting Lisbon.

But it was on the training ground at Finch Farm that the Spaniard was given the required warm welcome back.

“I remember the first few tackles after I came back,” says Arteta. “You always protect your knee or whatever, it’s just a subconscious thing. The first real test was from Tim Cahill or Bainesy. They went in hard twice, I was thinking ‘what have you done’, but it was fine.

“I never had doubts about coming back, it was just a case of when – I didn’t know if it was going to be three, six, 10 months or if I’d miss the rest of the season. But until you are back out on the pitch you don’t know for certain how it’s going to go.”

With Everton’s injury jinx once again biting – Tim Cahill has joined Marouane Fellaini on the sidelines for this afternoon’s visit of Manchester United – Arteta’s availability could not have come at a better time.

And he says: “We’re in the middle of a tough, tough month, playing every three or four days now. In fact we were planning for me to have three or four weeks training with the lads, but we got a few more injuries, Fellaini and others, so I had to speed it up.

“I got 15 minutes against Birmingham, and although I was happy to be back, we were out of the FA Cup. That made the final whistle against Chelsea last week even better. You know if you beat them you can pretty much beat anyone.

“You have to be at 100%, and it will be the same against United and Spurs if we want to beat them. If we’re at that level we can beat whoever, but three or four months ago anyone could come to us and win.”

And for all the Premier League’s foibles, Arteta would much sooner be a part of it than not.

“I watched every match from last season while I was doing my rehab,” he says. “I love watching football, but watching Everton was really hard, I hate it.

“Watching them win was beautiful but losing is even worse because you can’t do anything to help. It’s great being involved in everything again.”