According to the Mirror Alexis Sanchez said his goodbyes to his Arsenal teammates and left the team hotel last night as some kind of breakthrough was found between the Gunners and Manchester United over the deal which will see him move there.

It will be a swap deal with Henrikh Mkhitaryan and it had been deadlocked, with suggestions that the entire thing hinged on approval from the Armenian’s agent, Mino Raiola.

Basically, that means he was waiting for the right amount of money to be paid to him for brokering the deal, and the Italian is infamous for ensuring that he gets what he wants when his players are sold.

He collected almost £20m from United for the Paul Pogba transfer in the summer of 2016, and when dealing with two hugely wealthy clubs, he wasn’t going to let it happen without getting what he wants.

It’s an unfortunate aspect of modern football, but one that’s almost impossible to avoid if you want to take players from these so-called super agents.

The medicals for both players should take place today, but neither player will be able to play for their new clubs having missed the 12 noon deadline on Friday for them to be available.

Hopefully, it will all be over soon and we get can on with the important business of fretting about how we use Mkhitaryan and where exactly he’ll play in a team with Mesut Ozil.