Jarrad Branthwaite, James Tarkowski and now Jordan Pickford. All done. Next in line should be James Garner.

One of the biggest challenges of a complicated summer for David Moyes and those around him was the sheer number of decisions that needed to be made over contracts. The workload was a legacy of the final stages of the Farhad Moshiri era, a period that ended with survival being the priority. In those circumstances, forward planning was tough.

The consequence of leaving so many deals to expire at the same time was that a summer of transition began slowly as the futures of players from Dominic Calvert-Lewin to Seamus Coleman and Idrissa Gueye were resolved.

There will be an element...