Alexis Sánchez

And do what with the money? Players who come close to his quality for the 40-50 million we could re-invest probably are not going to choose for us since they have 5 or 6 other (better) options and we should be able to invest in players below that category (up-and-coming stars) without the money we had coming in from selling him.

The only thing that bothers me is that they didn’t anticipate on his pending exit from the club last summer, but put extra pressure on the next.

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Yes but they’re third in their league and he’s the best they could get to help they’re current season. Whether Alexis would rather hang on to make a bigger signing on fee in the summer is another matter

50-60m doesn’t buy you much in this market. Fekir/Lemar/Forsburg will all cost 100m.

I’m not really for or against selling him as it is. If we keep him maybe we have a better season and if he goes maybe we get better replacements in.

We could have got at least 40m for him in the last window and along with the money we got for Chamberlain we could have easily bought a top quality player.

He is clearly leaving this season and we have no chance of getting, or even attracting, a player of a similar quality.

I don’t understand what Wenger was thinking when he decided not buy a striker, in the seasons before we got Lacazette, or at least another world class player to play alongside Sanchez to show him we wanted to match his ambitions.

As @arsenescoatmaker says, Sanchez might as well see out the remaining games of this season and get the 30m we would have got for him, himself.

The naivety of Wenger in this, and Ozil’s situation, is staggering.
Thinking they would sign new contracts even though we are a team in stagnation and without any perceivable ambition.
From someone who claims to be an economics expert, his transfer strategy and approach to strengthening the squad, is an absolute shamble.

I don’t blame Sanchez in any of this.
If he makes 20-30m out of it for himself and goes to Man City, Chelsea or Man U, then Wenger will be responsible.

The only thing that is certain is that he and Ozil won’t be here next season and they won’t be replaced by anywhere near the quality playesr they are.

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And then Barça will come in for Ozil to counteract this and get a former Real player :laughing:

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Could he play in CL for Real this season?

I’m pretty sure he technically could yes

The thing is keeping players like Ozil and Alexis in their prime years instead of letting them go for 1/3 of their worth is something I’m not against. You’re getting the very peak of Alexis and Ozil until they reach the age of 29. From the age of 29/30 they will almost certainly be getting worse and certainly by the age of 32 they will be dropping off most likely.

If we sold both last window who do we get at best? Lemar? Well his performances are down on last season, he’s a player still in development.

Keeping both this season gives us the best possible squad for this season.

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Yeah but it adds to the budget.
You can add 50m to that 40m & buy a quality player, rather than adding 50m added to 0 & being short.

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I agree with that, if we had bought more than just Lacazette.
But realistically we are only competing four a top four place and after this season we will not only be losing three world class midfielders, we won’t be replacing them with anything like the quality required to replace.

Even if we did buy two or three world class players we would still only be in the same position we are this season because they are only replacing who has left, not strengthening the first team.

Exactly.
With the money for Chamberlain, and a possible 40m for Sanchez, as well as the 200m in the bank we could have bought a world class player but we are now sitting on a mountain of money so big you would need a sherpa and several pack horses to get to the top of.

We’re losing two (If we go along with you calling Alexis a midfielder), because we’ve already “lost” Santi, he hasn’t been around for quite a while. No need to make things sound worse than they are as it’s a bad enough situation already.

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The thing is without Alexis/Ozil this season we almost certainly don’t get CL football which is around 50m in itself.

Let’s not forget we’d be strengthening Man City too, letting them cherry pick our best player on deadline day for relative peanuts. We can live without strengthening a rival without being recompensed.

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Fair points

I take your point, but they don’t look much like rivals really

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Neither did Man U with RVP or Chelsea with Cesc

RvP was the difference though for Man U, he was the man who really stood out and made them great that year. We can only judge based on what we’ve seen so far, but Man City are sensational anyway despite not getting Alexis, he wouldn’t have been transformative in the way RvP was.

We didn’t sell Fabregas to Chelsea, Barcelona did, so that’s not a relevant example here imo

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United had the highest league points total for the prior 2 seasons. It’s the same situation in that Alexis/RVP/Cesc were all our best players. Cesc we had first option on according to him.

Not exercising a first option on a player is still radically different to selling a player to a rival

Man U might have had the highest points total in the previous season, but it really doesn’t look like they would have done in the following season had we not sold them RvP. Because in the following season without peak RvP they were shown up for what their side/squad really was. Which is not all that good.

On a Sidenote how good is Fergie ? Getting 89 points or so in 11/12 & 12/13 with the squads United had.

That’s a bit simplistic, Fergie was relying on an ageing squad, past great centre backs like Vidic and Rio, Scholes, Giggs and Carrick in the middle, Rooney and RVP up front with young legs like Valencia and Young supplementing their running. They all gave up their fight against father time after that last hurrah pretty much but the older players were all elite players. The young replacements Fergie and his successors bought simply weren’t the same class.

Would they have won the title without RVP? Maybe not, but Rooney as no9 with Kagawa with no10 would have given the latter much more success, which was originally the idea.