Arsenal had to wait nearly two decades to acquire a worthy heir to Vieira's throne, and that came at the cost of £105 million. Step forward, Declan Rice, the captain of neighbours West Ham and a core member of the England setup. To his testament, there was little baulking at the price tag he came with, and Rice has looked worth every penny since swapping east London for north.

Rice has hit the checkpoints to become a person who will be in the lives of football fans one way or another for a generation. The legacy he's writing for himself is approaching the stuff of legend.

 No one expected Rice to be this good. Not even close. When he first emerged at West Ham as a defensive midfielder who could slot in between the centre-backs, it was widely said his ceiling was as an Eric Dier-type player - a good-not-great starter for a team in the top six.

To his credit, Rice became more than simply a water carrier. It felt as if he was adding new parts to his game all the time, evolving from a destroyer to a tempo-setter to a box-to-box behemoth. It was no coincidence this aligned with West Ham's swift reversal from relegation candidates to European regulars considering they turned a youth academy graduate into a multi-million pound midfielder with remarkable consistency.