And so, a headline in the Financial Times last week immediately caught my eye: it read, "Middle East states set for $1.3 trillion (£1.1 trillion/€1.3 trillion) oil windfall, says IMF".

It turned out that Jihad Azour, the IMF's director for the Middle East and North Africa, had told the newspaper's Middle East editor that this region's oil and gas exporters would see "additional cumulative oil revenues of $1.3 trillion through 2026" relative to expectations before the war in Ukraine.

Wow: you do not need me to tell you that $1.3 trillion is a very, very large amount of money, unimaginably so to most of us; and four years is not a very long period of time.

My primary conclusion: not only has Vladimir Putin wrought the short-term ostracisation of Russia from international sport, he has paved the way for the most glittering international sports events - and other attractive Western baubles - to be gobbled up by the Gulf states at a rate the like of which we have not witnessed even over the past year or so.

The IMF’s recently-published country focus on Saudi Arabia, headlined "Saudi Arabia to Grow at Fastest Pace in a Decade", buttresses this assertion.

"Saudi Arabia is likely to be one of the world’s fastest-growing economies this year," the report begins.

"Gross domestic product is expected to expand by 7.6 percent, the fastest growth in almost a decade," yet "inflation will remain contained at 2.8 per cent in 2022".

Think about that: while Western European Governments mull how much of the pain of surging energy prices they can afford to inflict on consumers already hard-stretched after a decade and a half of insipid growth, and while China seemingly reins in its once towering football ambitions as it continues to battle COVID-19, an escalating chunk of the world’s new capital will be pumping out of the ground and into the pockets of men who were already the sports world’s most conspicuous spenders.

I am not surprised that FIFA boss (and International Olympic Committee member) Gianni Infantino - a man generally pretty quick on the uptake when it comes to sensing which way the financial winds are blowing – found time in his busy schedule to watch the Oleksandr Usyk-Anthony Joshua heavyweight championship fight in Jeddah with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud.

All I can do is wish British businessman Sir Jim Ratcliffe luck if he really wants to buy into Manchester United: I suspect he will have to move quickly if he is to strike a deal at what he would regard as anything like an acceptable price.

Nor, much as many might hope otherwise, would I expect minority rights/freedom of speech issues to act as much of a brake on this potentially massive new wave of Middle East investment in Big Ticket sport.

The war in Ukraine is already helping to boost the Middle East economy in other ways.

Another FT report highlights rocketing demand for luxury property in Dubai.

This has been triggered, or so it says, by "a wave of new entrants to the city, from Asian billionaires and cryptocurrency investors to wealthy Russians looking to escape sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine".

One local property consultant is quoted as saying that sales to customers from Russia and the former Soviet states have doubled this year compared to the same 2021 period.

The world is a complicated place and things can change very quickly.

It is not so long ago, after all, that I found myself sat in Perugia listening with astonishment as one of former Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s children told me how, a few months earlier, they had been "about to buy shares in Manchester United" - a move he likened to "buying the Church of England".

The way things are looking right now though, I have a simple message for anyone observing the mounting frequency with which the eyes of international sports fans are turning to the Gulf, and how trophy Western sports assets have been snapped up by Middle Eastern buyers: You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.