Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City gear up for chaotic and free-spending transfer deadline day

With the likes of Alexis Sanchez, Virgil van Dijk, Philippe Coutinho all looking for a new club, there could be up to £400m worth of deals done at the end of this most extravagant of summers

After a summer that has already seen the Premier League again breach the £1bn mark, because 13 clubs have already broken their transfer record, it is all set up for one more eye-opening figure - and that is not even the fee that Manchester City may yet pay for Alexis Sanchez.

It is instead what that saga is certain to contribute to: the most chaotic and extravagantly free-spending deadline day there has been. Thursday will for once justify the hype, if not necessarily the hyperactive spending.

Just as this window is set to break the record for expenditure in a single window, there has never been a deadline day that has involved so many unresolved major storylines, that could yet see up to £400m worth major deals go through right at the end.

The following sagas all need to be sorted, one way or another: Sanchez, Philippe Coutinho, Virgil van Dijk, Antonio Conte’s frustrated search for Chelsea reinforcements, Diego Costa, Ross Barkley, Thomas Lemar, Julian Draxler and the rest of the Paris Saint-Germain cast-offs as well as Arsenal’s generally depressing window.

All of that also means that - depending on how certain storylines play out - there is even more potential for the type of deadline day out-of-nowhere wild card that really enlivens the last few hours, except there’s the potential of a multitude of them. If Arsene Wenger does for example finally decide that it is not worth keeping a player who is - according to one source - “desperate to leave” in Sanchez, what could Arsenal do with so much extra money and so much extra wages to spend?

It is the Chilean’s situation that feels the most sensational storyline on the day, the saga with the greatest potential consequences. City remain confident they can finally get a deal done for Sanchez, but they aren’t quite as confident as they were on Monday evening. That is because of both the difficulty of getting it done with the 28-year-old set to play a World Cup qualifier in Santiago as the window closes on Thursday night, and the fact they are only set to offer cash, with Arsenal wanting a sizeable offer as well as a player.

It’s difficult now to wonder how devastated the mood around the Emirates will be if they do lose Sanchez after all that, having already lost two of their opening three matches, and having already lost Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Liverpool claimed a significant coup in beating Chelsea to his signature, but now want to continue their spending for what will end up their own most extravagant ever window, as they hope to also beat Chelsea and everyone else to the title by finally giving Jurgen Klopp the depth required to win it for the first time in 28 years. They still want to bring in Arsenal target Lemar, but haven’t yet given up hope of signing Van Dijk. The Dutch centre-half remains hopeful something will happen, but Southampton remain adamant they will not sell to Liverpool. It could get tense.

Chelsea don’t quite face those complications in trying to deepen their squad, but they still have to match the club valuations for Swansea City’s Fernando Llorente, Leicester City’s Danny Drinkwater and Everton’s Barkley, while Conte would still like that wing-back.

Tottenham Hotspur could yet challenge them for Barkley, but Chelsea have the leverage of Costa potentially going the other way. He still wants to go to Atletico Madrid, and the fact the Spanish window is actually open an extra day adds even more edge to all of this, as well as Barcelona’s pursuit of Coutinho.

All of that ensures Thursday is likely to be a highly active day, with all of that heightened and made more frenetic by the potential stakes. City want to create what might end up the strongest possible attack - and bench - the Premier League has seen by signing Sanchez. Liverpool want to at last build on the opportunity offered by Champions League qualification, and it’s hard not to feel there will be a slight sense of deflation if they only bring in Oxlade-Chamberlain, sharpening the debate over their ownership. There will be a very different mood around Chelsea if Conte doesn’t get who he wants, although he has insisted he is prepared to knuckle down once the window closes regardless of what happens. Then there's Arsenal. No more needs to be said on that for now, although so much will be said if the worst does happen.

But this is also the extra tension to tomorrow. All of these sagas may have to come to some kind of conclusion, but the fall-out could yet go on so much longer - especially given how it will dictate the Premier League itself.

It is just something else that would only fit the most sensational summer window ever seen, with these signings set to bring quite the sign-off.