Alexis Sanchez was dropped from Arsenal’s starting XI this weekend. Does this spell the end for the Chilean’s time in north London?
Arsene Wenger dropped Alexis Sanchez from his starting XI for Arsenal’s match against Liverpool this weekend, a decision that led to further speculation about the Chilean’s future at the London club. Sanchez’s contract runs out at the end of next season, and negotiations over a new one have stalled with Wenger’s future also up in the air. The question, then, is simple: does Sanchez have any future at Arsenal?
Sanchez and Arsenal still have plenty more to give each other
James Dudko, @JamesDudko
Alexis Sanchez still has a future at Arsenal, with or without Arsene Wenger as manager.
It may look as though Sanchez, whose contract expires in 2018, can’t wait to race through the exit door at the Emirates Stadium ahead of schedule this summer. But his Gunners career is far from over as along as the club can provide some continuity around its best player.
The process has to start with finally settling on the South American’s best position. It’s not on the bench, where Wenger surprisingly put Sanchez for the first half of Saturday’s 3-1 Premier League defeat at Liverpool.
Frankly, it shouldn’t be difficult since Wenger has gone some way to transforming Sanchez into a Thierry Henry-style striker this season. It’s a transformation that caught me by surprise, but one that has worked well for the Gunners when they’ve been at their best during this campaign.
Like Henry, Sanchez is a wide player who has been converted to a role through the middle. Yet just like Henry, Sanchez has not lost his fondness for striking from the flanks. It’s why he often drifts left during matches, a trait that needn’t be a problem for a team playing the type of fluid football Wenger preaches.
Sanchez roaming onto the wings simply creates space for others to exploit centrally in a shape-shifting attack based on intelligent rotating of positions in the final third. In fairness to Wenger, it’s how this season’s attack clicked earlier in the campaign, when Theo Walcott and Mesut Ozil routinely filled the spaces Sanchez opened to attack through the middle and score goals.
However, Walcott’s injury woes and Ozil’s form taking a nosedive have since robbed Sanchez of his two best supporting acts. If there’s one obvious thing Arsenal are missing to help make Sanchez, it’s a forward player on his wavelength in terms of movement off the ball.
Ozil and Walcott’s early success this season also showcased the other side of what makes Sanchez so effective as a roving striker for the Gunners. They both usually scored after connecting with classy passes from the Chilean.
Creativity is an underrated part of Sanchez’s game, a facet underlined by his 12 assists this season, per WhoScored.com. Just as Henry did years ago, Sanchez acts as both chief goalscorer and prolific supplier of goals. It’s a dual role that heightens Arsenal’s attacking menace whenever Sanchez starts through the middle.
However, he doesn’t always start there because of Wenger’s increasing tendency to tinker with his personnel and formations. When Sanchez came off the bench at Anfield, he found himself on the left wing after operating centrally in his previous three starts.
The switch was just one more change in a campaign defined by positional inconsistency for Sanchez. He began the season as Arsenal’s central striker of choice, but was shoved back out wide during December and early January in favour of target man Olivier Giroud.
Wenger said his decision to start Giroud against Liverpool was tactical, according to Charles Perrin of the Sunday Express. However, his reasoning about playing a more direct game speaks to a worrying lack of tactical commitment made to Sanchez this season.
The problem stems from Wenger’s growing habit of altering Arsenal’s playing style for different opponents, something he’s rarely done during his two decades in charge. Sanchez is at his best when the Gunners’ method of going forward is designed to exploit his pace with on-the-deck passing between the lines. He struggles when asked to react to long balls and knock-downs around Giroud.
Of course, Sanchez staying at Arsenal is as much down to the player as it is Wenger. There have been troubling accounts of training ground arguments and teammates becoming frustrated with the difficult attacker, according to BBC Sport’s David Ornstein.
Perhaps Sanchez would cut a happier figure if Wenger moves on at the end of the season. The under-fire manager is out of contract this summer, but his successor would surely want to keep Sanchez in the fold.
If Wenger’s replacement was a man like Juventus boss Massimiliano Allegri, who continues to be linked with the job, per Neil Fissler of the Sunday Express, maybe Sanchez would be convinced to stick around and sign a new deal.
Ultimately, the player ought to realise that as gifted as he is, he has expanded and refined his game considerably since joining Arsenal in 2014. Provided he’s allowed to remain the team’s focal point, there’s no reason the future can’t be bright for Sanchez with the Gunners.
Sanchez is too good for Arsenal
Rory Masterson, @rorymasterson
Unless you’re already in this dire predicament, suspend reality for a moment and imagine that you’re an Arsenal fan. First things first: sorry for doing this to you. Your fandom is shorthand the world over for failing to meet expectation, let alone surpass it. Unlike fans of Liverpool, you are bound to walk alone, forever, on the interminable march to a cold and infinite end.
With that out of the way, let’s turn to the present, dismal condition which becomes you. The Gunners currently sit fifth in the Premier League table, having just lost 3-1 on Saturday to the very team ahead of them, Liverpool. What at one point looked like a strong push for the title has dissolved into grasping at straws for European play. It’s a familiar chorus.
Though he has led Arsenal to trophies in recent years, notably winning the FA Cup back-to-back in 2014 and ’15, Arsene Wenger remains a contentious subject for Arsenal fans. His influential style and preparation methods may have run their course at the Emirates.
Yet, despite record spending across the globe, as well as huge signings in recent years for the Gunners themselves, the club continues to turn a profit, making Wenger’s position that much easier (or difficult) to assess from an ownership standpoint. Stan Kroenke has proven that nothing pleases him more than padding his wallet. Thus, when the manager makes a decision as controversial as benching arguably his best player, as Wenger did with Alexis Sanchez on Saturday, the onus falls on player rather than coach.
Following what The Independent deemed “an angry disagreement with a teammate, that continued in the changing rooms once the rest of the team returned there after finishing,” Wenger dropped Sanchez from the starting lineup of a game of vital importance. The manager seems to have felt it was for the good of the team, but that it happened at perhaps the most important point of the season thus far is troubling, to say the least.
The winger came on after halftime, replacing Francis Coquelin with his side already down 2-0. Sanchez revitalized a lukewarm Gunners side, pressuring Liverpool’s defenders with pace and creating opportunities where there had been few previously. He even had the assist on the only Arsenal goal of the day, a spinetingling through ball that resulted in Danny Welbeck’s first Premier League goal of the season.
Despite relinquishing another in stoppage time, Arsenal were simply a different team with Sanchez on the pitch. Mesut Ozil’s recent injury troubles notwithstanding, Sanchez is the lightning to Ozil’s thunder, the outside pressure cooker capable of delivering and playing off of the German’s methodical playmaking.
Sanchez is 28 years old, the product of Cobreloa’s youth ranks as well as a run with the Xavi-Iniesta-Messi iteration of Barcelona. His value depreciates daily for Arsenal, as the Chilean winger has 16 months remaining on his contract and is reportedly looking for a pay raise with the next one.
With Juventus and PSG both in hot pursuit, greener pastures may yet await Sanchez. The player’s value is not lost on him, certainly. He has been the key player in two of Arsenal’s four trophy-winning sides since 2004, and has captured consecutive Copa Americas over the past two years with the Chilean national team.
Wenger’s Arsenal have a history of letting high-priced players walk with the intent to find equivalent value in a replacement. It’s a business ideal as much as it is a soccer one, which might be the problem.
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If Arsenal are not to respect the wishes of their best players, then the purgatory that rests right at the edge of winning a title is where they deserve to be. Tottenham have made a home there, after all. At what point does the club prioritize winning over profitability?
The answer to that question lies somewhere in the tense atmosphere between Wenger and Sanchez. The latter knows his worth, while the former is trying to convince him otherwise. How can a player with world-class talent and scoring touch can be happy making below his worth at a team, and under a manager, satisfied with simply being good rather than great? Soon enough, hopefully, that’s a question Sanchez need not be forced to consider.