When Arsene Wenger established the theme in September that, increasingly, the leading players would run down their contracts and it would spell the end for the rising transfer fee, he must already have known that January would be the month dominated by Alexis Sanchez.

The proposed Sanchez transfer is most lucrative for the player, on a salary of £350,000 per week, and his agent on a fee of around £12million. Less so for Arsenal, who would nonetheless bank the equivalent of £30million in the form of the great doleful Armenian playmaker, Henrik Mkhitaryan.

The value for Sanchez is nothing like that which might be realised for a player of his standing were he on a longer contract, not six months from being a free agent, although for a while now Wenger has said this will be the norm in the future. Wenger says that players will refuse either to leave or to sign a new contract, and as a consequence take the lion’s share of what would have been the transfer fee when eventually they depart in the final months of their contract.

In September he said that ever more players would hang on to the end of their contract. “You [the club] will be in a position where you either extend for money you cannot afford or you will go into the final year.