At this point, it’s quite clear that Alexis Sanchez is off from Arsenal in the summer, so it seems only prudent that we should look forward to what sort of cash we can get for him.

Despite what Ian Wright thinks, Sanchez’s decision to leave will not and has not come about because he was dropped against Liverpool.

In fact, you could point to him being dropped because he wants to leave.

Regardless, a player who thinks it’s acceptable to demand a move from a club because he was dropped once is not a team player. Nor is one who demands to be played each and every minute lest he throw a tantrum and make you look bad.

This isn’t an argument about whether he should have started in that game or not, but how a player should deal with that news. While I believe Alexis falls in the latter ‘demandy camp’, I don’t think even he would be driven to leave a club just because he was dropped once.

But he does want to leave.

I think you have to be wilfully ignorant at this point to think otherwise.

I know about the eternal optimist that lives in the recesses of even the most hardened fan. That tiny piece of you that still believes a league title might come as long as it’s mathematically possible, even though you know the side is playing like a bunch of three-legged donkeys on acid.

Granted, Arsenal over recent seasons have squished this optimist dude down to broken shell of what he used to be. But he lives on in many.

Only they think that Alexis will remain at Arsenal beyond the summer.

For the rest of us, he’s off.

So how much is he worth?

Well, on first glance, quite a lot. £55.25m said the Daily Star recently.

He’s at the peak of his powers, still a few years from 30, and scoring for fun.

But he has one year left on his contract and that becomes a problem.

Arsene Wenger previously said that he will keep Alexis and Ozil at the club until the end of their contracts, regardless of if they sign on or not, but that just doesn’t seem possible now – and that’s assuming it will be Arsene making the decision in the summer.

As things get worse on the playing front with the turn of March not even able to lift the side, Wenger moves ever closer to the exit door.

Fail to finish in the top four and he could go, a pathetic whimper ending what should have been a glorious exit for our most successful manager ever.

It’s been allowed to go on for too long now, and it’s hard to suffer through.

Tangents everywhere in this.

Alexis’s value – I’m trying to tell you how much Arsenal can get for Alexis.

Right, right, yes.

The first figure out of the gate is £30m which Juventus are supposed to have bid for him.

If you think that’s a lowball figure, it is, but it’s not much less than we signed him for a few seasons ago.

The problem, as I mentioned, is that one year on his contract.

If we paid £34m for him three years ago, technically with amortisation, his contract is now worth around £8.5m. To sell him for that amount would be tantamount to a crime, but you can see already that £30m comes with the crazy already factored in.

£30m is an opening offer but I can’t see Arsenal getting much more than that.

They have a player who wants to leave, whose camp are clearly trying to push a move to Juventus and an Italian side who seem happy to play along.

As we saw with Robin van Persie and his insistence on going to Manchester United and Manchester united only, the only thing that does is screw the selling club.

It will be easy for fans to attack the club over this but there is little else they could have done.

They have tried to get Alexis to sign a new deal and offered him a pay rise of £50k per week if reports are to be believed.

There is an argument that they should just pay him what he wants, but at what point do you stop and tell players they can’t have whatever they want?

Also, pushing his salary up to £250k per week would push up every other salary at the club.

Arsenal have got to the point where he has one year left because they’ve been trying to get him to sign a new deal for the guts of 12 months.

The only other option would have been to sell him in the last summer window.

How do you imagine that would have gone down?