A rumour doing the rounds that Inter Milan could swap Ivan Perisic for Alexis seems to have originated with Perisic’s agent who is looking to move the player to the Premier League.

It’s worth stating up front that the news about all this started as an exclusive on the site, Calciomercato.com, which published the ‘quotes’ from Lucas Perez’s agent that were denied.

Anyway, Perisic wants a move to the Premier League, Inter Milan want Alexis and Perisic has just changed agents to Fali Ramadani who thinks he sees a way to make sure everybody gets what they want.

Apart from Arsenal, obviously, who do not want to let Alexis leave.

Perisic, 28, has seven goals and five assists in 23 league games this season – some way shy of Alexis’s 17 and nine. Although both players are the same age, there is something of a massive gap between their ability and value.

Swap deals rarely ever come to anything. Think of how many you’ve heard rumoured compared to how many you know of that actually went through.

There is also no indication that Perisic would be a player Arsenal are even interested in. Or that Alexis would agree to a move to Inter Milan.

Given that we are told he wants to move to a club to win things, a move to the Italians would seem odd. Their record over the past five years is considerably worse than Arsenal’s. They last won a trophy of any sort in 2011 (Coppa Italia) and have not won the league since 2010 – finishing fourth (outside Champions League), eighth, and fifth in the last three seasons.

They are currently fifth, six points away from the qualifying Champions League spot, eight from an automatic one.