Real Madrid are currently 15 points adrift of Barcelona at the top of La Liga and four behind Atletico Madrid in second.

Zinedine Zidane is already the club’s third most successful manager with seven titles to his name but this season could see the Spaniards sack him regardless of what he has won recently. They have no room for sentiment at either of Spain’s biggest clubs.

Real Madrid are also another club who have chased Wenger for a while and another he has made no secret of turning down.

They tried in 2004, 2006 and 2009 but don’t seem to have returned since. Perhaps they felt here was no point, perhaps they got annoyed at being turned down so many times or perhaps they no longer feel that Wenger could do the job they needed him to do in the first ten years of the millennium.

Wenger almost joined them in 2006 after he lost the Champions League final. He was offered a contract by Villar Mir, who was a candidate to become the new president of the club, but Vir lost the election.

Whatever Real Madrid feel about Wenger now, the Frenchman has also admitted that the Bernabeu side were his ‘childhood club’. “Real is the club of my childhood,” Wenger admitted in 2009.

“When I was a kid, watching those guys in white, winning everything, then of course I am attracted by that club, but I have a pact with the young players of my team, and I want to succeed with that bet.

“I identified what was important in my job: freedom. Here, I have it.

“I could have earned bigger wages at Real, but I earn a good living in London. At my age, money can’t play a key role.

“If I left for Real, I would have tried to filter through my philosophy, re-organized everything. I could have given foundations to the club’s structure.”

If they don’t want him, he could always…