In recent weeks, we’ve come across a whole range of different stories about player X joining club Y. The funny is that while we all see money in football, there is an acceptance that the money in the game might just be about to drop a touch. The COVID-19 outbreak has left many football clubs unable to keep their transfer plans in place. This is not just logistically, but financially as well.

Major deals were being spoken of for the likes of Kylian Mbappe and Neymar Jr. – can anyone really see any club having the hundreds of millions that it would need to sign either?

And in reality, is this going to bring about a quiet end to the major money moves we have seen for the last few years?

Within a short period of time, football went from Paul Pogba being a near-€100m player to Neymar costing in excess of €200m. The transfer record, and the wages that went with it, have exploded in recent years. This was always a bubble that could never be sustained, but will this viral outbreak play a major role in making people realise just how severe the issue is?

It’s going to become a major talking point in the weeks and the months to come. It’s also going to see many clubs re-evaluate where their money goes. While clubs have thrown around hundreds of millions for years now, the time of such ludicrous singings might be about to come to an end. For that reason, there’s a genuine interest in seeing what comes next. With football about to change almost entirely over the coming months, are the days of major contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds per week gone?

Is it possible for any club to realistically go back to the kind of figures being thrown around before this outbreak happened? Football has been shown just how vulnerable it really is. For all the wealth at the top, it’s been shown that even the biggest clubs lack the financial steel to survive something as intense as this – not without cuts and concessions.