London: To paraphrase the great Mrs Merton, there is only one appropriate question now to ask of N’Golo Kante: what was it about the pounds 150,000-a-week (Dh721,546) contract that first attracted you to Chelsea?

At first glance, the French midfielder’s move to London was ploddingly, depressingly familiar.

Never mind that Leicester City, the club who, largely thanks to Kante’s unyielding midfield work, won the title last season; never mind that they will be competing in the Champions League next term while his new employers are not.

What always talks loudest in football is money.

And from the moment Leicester lifted the Premier League trophy, it seemed only a matter of time before a covetous circle of vultures would form around the King Power, looking to buy off the elements which had made the club so successful.

After all, it has happened every time a less-renowned club have defied expectation.

Remember what happened to Porto when they won the Champions League trophy under Jose Mourinho’s stewardship in 2004?

They were immediately picked apart by richer rivals.

Almost every member of the first-team squad was transferred out of the club, several of them following Mourinho as he himself exploited his moment to buff up his current account by heading — where else — to Stamford Bridge.

It was bound to take place this time, we thought. Kante, Riyad Mahrez, Danny Drinkwater, Jamie Vardy, Kasper Schmeichel: the key elements of the Foxes’ success would inevitably be lured elsewhere by a flourish of cash waved in their direction.

The ritual asset-stripping would turn inevitably into a stampede.

Leicester’s reward would be to watch their prized assets disappear from under Claudio Ranieri’s nose.

Except, so far this summer, the drip, drip has not turned into a torrent; Kante has been the only significant departure.

Sure, Steve Walsh, the backroom wizard, is heading to Goodison Park, where money is being flung in his direction in the hope he might deliver the same kind of bargain-hunting prowess he showed in signing the likes of Kante in the first place.

But from the first-team squad, there has not been the anticipated stampede for the exits.

Instead, Drinkwater and Schmeichel are about to sign new contracts, Mahrez looks as though he will join them and, leading the way, Vardy has turned down Arsenal.

But lest the unrequited football romantic should get overexcited by what appears to be an epoch-defining reversal of the norm, it is worth remembering this: the personnel who made the team champions are not staying simply out of newly found reserves of loyalty.

Money still has a persuasive tongue.

The point is that money is now not restricted to the elite. Thanks to the new domestic broadcast deal, and the bounty available from qualifying for the Champions League for the first time, Leicester have the financial muscle to resist the raiders.

Porto did not have a minimum guaranteed income of some pounds 125million in 2004. Nothing like. Leicester can, if not absolutely match the bounty available in the dressing rooms of more endowed clubs, at least come close. Kante may have signed on for pounds 150,000 a week, but Vardy hardly need fear the arrival of the bailiffs now he is poised to be earning over pounds 100,000 at Leicester.

Add to that the opportunity to play in Europe’s senior competition with the team with whom he achieved so much last year, and there appear to be 100,000 fewer reasons now to desert.