Real Madrid will send scouts to watch Dani Ceballos play for Arsenal against Tottenham on Sunday as we look set for a mammoth transfer battle to land the midfielder on a permanent deal after only a few games.

Dani Ceballos has impressed. Of that there is no doubt. While Zinedine Zidane clearly has his problems with the 23-year-old, you can see why the Real Madrid hierarchy are huge fans of the player.

It has already been speculated in Spain that, should the La Liga side sell Ceballos to Arsenal in the summer he could well return their biggest ever profit for a player, having signed for £14.85m from Real Betis in 2017.

Now, the Real Madrid site, Defensa Central, write that the club expect a ‘stratospheric offer’ from Arsenal for Ceballos in the summer.

There is, unfortunately, no purchase clause in Ceballos’ loan deal with Arsenal. Should the Gunners want to sign him permanently next summer then they will have to pay the going market rate. Given how transfer fees have inflated this summer, feck only knows what that means by the time we get to the end of the season.

Most likely, Arsenal will have to shatter their own transfer fee record, only recently broken to purchase Nicolas Pepe from Lille for £72m, to keep Ceballos.

And all of this assumes that Real Madrid will sell at any price or that the player will want to remain in London.

Fail to get into the Champions League yet again and the lure of Madrid will no doubt be impossible for Ceballos to ignore.