da heads bet： There are only hours left, and Arsenal probably now couldn’t find a replacement even if they wanted to. But was turning down big money for Alexis Sanchez really the right course of action for Arsenal in this transfer window?
da doce： There was a school of thought that blocking the Chilean’s exit from the club this summer despite his wish to leave was a positive step from the Gunners. What it was supposed to show was that things were different this year. After signing Alexandre Lacazette – the prolific, valuable striker they were accused of failing to sign in previous windows – winning an FA Cup and switching formation away from the tactically inflexible 4-2-3-1, it was as though Arsenal were keen to stress that Arsene Wenger was becoming the catalyst for change he was touted as being by Ivan Gazidis just a few months earlier.
Few were fooled by it. And whilst there may have been some signs at a willingness to change the way things were done at the Emirates Stadium, not a whole lot has changed. And after the 4-0 defeat at Anfield last weekend, it looks like nothing will, either.
In the wake of that, it looked like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Alexis Sanchez and Shkodran Mustafi were on their way out of the club for varying reasons, but in the end, it looks like only Chamberlain will have been allowed to depart.
But the thing is, given not much has changed, is it really right to keep Sanchez at the club given his contract will run down and the club stands to lose a reported £60m (£55m plus £5m in add-ons) from the non-sale?
That’s the question that should be on everyone’s lips. Add that’s despite the fact that Arsenal are now in a position where they won’t lose their best player – something which should surely be a positive thing, but which may well have turned into a negative one.
The situation is this: Arsenal now have to keep a player who doesn’t want to stay and who can leave on a free next summer. Indeed, he can spend the whole season negotiating moves away from the club, hunting for houses, checking out the restaurants and whatever else a footballer might want to do before settling on a city to move to. In other words, he can spend the year doing whatever he wants to apart from applying himself for Arsenal.
Indeed, for Sanchez, that’s even more the case than it would be for most players who don’t want to play for their current clubs during a World Cup year. The Chile international is so well-loved in his country and is one of their few world class stars. He won’t be dropped, nor will he have his place given to someone else if he has a poor season. Nothing will change for Sanchez.
But something will change for Arsenal. They’ll have £60m less in their bank account to spend next year on a new player. They’ll need to replace him eventually, but depending on Sanchez’s application to the task this season, they may have needed to replace him this summer and not next.
None of this is to say that the situation is particularly Arsenal’s fault. They may have dealt with the issue earlier, but then so could Manchester City. If they really wanted the player, they might have made their first formal bid last week or even last month instead of just days before the transfer deadline. They should have known that Arsenal’s stance on selling would have been dependent on finding a replacement, and yet they gave the Gunners no time to actually find one.
And so we’re in a position where it looks ambitious of Arsenal to stand firm on the departure of their best player in the face of pressure, to turn down the money and to attempt to win silverware with him. The problem is, last week’s result casts doubt on their ability to do more than simply flop in the league, flop in Europe and maybe do enough in the final weeks of the season to win the FA Cup, when all the other big teams are tiring from their continued participation in title races and European competitions. It doesn’t look ambitious at this point, it just looks silly.
They should have taken the money, reinvested it and got rid of a wantaway player. Instead, they have an unhappy one.
Who knows, Sanchez might surprise us. He might pull his sleeves up, get stuck in and show the world why he was a 28-year-old in the final year of his contract and still worth £60m. But at this point, it just looks like another reason why Arsenal’s season looks to be fighting for its life already.