Despite the pitfalls and the inability to plan sufficiently beyond January, EFL clubs have little option but to continue to mine the loan market and play the game. Ultimately, not doing so makes life so much harder.

There is also a wider picture to consider, as sometimes a loan of a player can be a stepping stone to an even better deal further down the line, should trust be sufficiently built.

Money still talks in many ways, when it comes to the Championship attracting the best Premier League under-21 talent with the need to pay a substantial loan fee, but so do previous relationships.

For Walsall, who since Lowe left have won just one of five games, there is an understandable licking of wounds.

But ultimately he helped put them in the position they now occupy and for the long term has helped to create and enhance boss Mat Sadler and the club’s reputation as somewhere clubs can send their players for development.

This has been proven with Manchester United sending striker Ethan Wheatley to Bescot Stadium, and Stoke loaning them a second player in midfielder Darius Lipsiuc.

“In any shape or form, that was a fantastic loan for us; 30 games, and the productivity of that was brilliant,” Sadler said of Lowe.

“Now we have to find the next one – that’s football, that’s life. I’ve got no problem with that. I love the fact that we have a part of Nathan’s journey and, as a football club, that’s how we work and operate.

“What we’ll try to do now is be a place where people want to send their players, which I don’t think has been the case always.

“I don’t see it as an evil, I see it as brilliant – he’s done well, now we have to get on with the next one.”

Additional reporting by Michael Beardmore and Andrew Moon.