Alexis Sánchez

Because there were many people also believed that no one is bigger than the club.
We should have him rotton on the bench for the whole season to teach him a lesson, OR, we had miracles on the field and to win his heart beck by getting into the CL again or by winning something significant, like the league and/or Europa,

Even if he’d played a blinder, I think it’s still hard to justify turning down £60m for one season of one player when there’s very little to no chance of them signing an extension (though that bit is just my conjecture although I’m sure we all feel that way too).

I remember many on here thinking United were mad for spending something like £15m to have Falcao for a season (and that was before they really knew he was fucked).

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Agreed, it’s not like the van Persie situation because city are already stupidly strong as it is, it isn’t your title rival buying the best player in the league to win them a trophy.

Alexis for Chile even under the shit manager who he didn’t get along with (Pizzi) he was constantly motivated and regularly their best player even if they failed to make the World Cup, he was a star for them especially in the copa America (USA).

Under pep it could be argued he’d flourish once again, but I don’t think Alexis would’ve been the difference with them winning the league or not considering their attacking talent already at their disposal.

Of course, accepting 60m (if there ever was really an approach from city this summer?) means hardly anything, what use is that money at the end of the transfer window and well, like fuck it would’ve been reinvested even if he was sold in June/July.

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Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

At the time, it was said we were showing ambition by keeping him. Many people agreed and even praised the club for being stubborn. Wenger reiterated over and over again that Alexis wasn’t going anywhere. Had we have sold him, he would have been called weak and a feeder again.

Knowing what we know now, it’s easy to say we should have taken the money. But at the time we had no way of knowing how it’d turn out. If Alexis had had the season that Salah has had for example, would people still say we should have taken the £60m? (Though I really doubt that it was that much anyway)

It definitely feels like more people are saying “I said we should have sold him in the summer” than who actually did say that. It was a minority by my recollection.

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Its all well and good saying we should have sold him in the summer but I think we probably would have sold him if city hadn’t left it so late to bid

At least 42% :stuck_out_tongue:

Though I seem to recall being of the opinion keep one and sell the other and only came up with getting rid of Alexis because I thought he’d sell for a lot more than Ozil would.

I think that was Wenger doing what he does best and being stubborn.

It would have been weak to sell him and do nothing but if we had sold him early in the transfer window and spent all the money and more on a player like Lemar, and maybe even another player, then that would have been a true statement of intent.

Instead Wenger is stuck with a player who clearly doesn’t want to be here and he is scared to sub him off because of upsetting an already unhappy player.
We are also potentially around 80m worse off if he goes at the end of the season on a free.

There weren’t many, but I was one of them, and got heavily criticised by some because of it.
To me, this situation was inevitable and could have easily been avoided if we had a manager who wasn’t so indecisive.

Still the minority party :grin:

Part of me wants to search through all the people who said they wanted to keep him and see if they’ve now said “I told you we should have sold him”, but the bigger part of me wants to watch re-runs of Friends.

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Lemar is having a bang average season also from what I’ve seen.

So the choice is trawling through old posts in the Sanchez thread or watching old episodes of Friends.
Could I suggest another option?
Watching paint dry :wink:
It would be more satisfying.

Yeah I hear all that. With the hindsight part, I was referring the fact that many of us thought that he had a level of professionalism that would mean that he would still perform to a high level. We thought he had enough personal pride that he would play like he gave a fuck, even if he didn’t give a fuck about Arsenal. The idea behind that being he could quite possibly fire us to CL qualification, which would basically even out the money “lost” by not selling him to City, and overall leave us “profiting” from the decision when you consider the non financial benefits being in the CL would bring.

All your points are valid and I was fairly torn in the summer, but I incorrectly came down on the side of thinking on balance keeping him was a good thing to do. With hindsight I can see I was wrong. Others didn’t need the benefit of hindsight to see we should have sold him, I can admit that.

@Phoebica does have a point about being damned either way, if we had sold him and City had as good a season as they are currently having the people who run the club would have been absolutely destroyed by the fans and wider football community.

Edit: @Phoebica just go one channel up to Comedy Central Extra and watch Impractical Jokers instead, that shit is hilarious

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This post of mine from May had 7 likes. Whoever liked it is assumed to agree with me.

Well done team

One way arsenal wouldn’t have been damned would be if they sold him early and got a replacement straight away

Also yeah @Phoebica what you doing watching friends when impractical Jokers is on?

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First one to like :joy: :joy: :joy:

Always knew Alexis was suspect generally. Remember questioning his mentality/attitude long before anyone realised

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:rofl:

On the subject of Impratical Jokers, how do those guys still continue to fool people after all these years?!

Exactly.
If he wanted to leave there was no point keeping him, so take the money, show some ambition in the transfer market, and get on with it.
If Wenger’s plan was to show a player that no one is bigger than the club, then that plan has backfired and will cost us another season of mediocrity as well as any money we could have got for a suitable replacement.

Well yeah maybe the people that would criticise in that case shouldn’t be taken into account as they would have criticized no matter what.

But that is the option that would result in the least amount of damned.

On the Jokers: They probably edit out the ones where they get noticed lol

My boy @sevchenko you were the first with the agenda and opened my eyes to Alexis dodginess.

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Yeah I remember thinking the same thing.

I actually thought he’d strop for a little while (e.g. his suspect not fit enough to play early in the season) but then get over it by the end of October and accept his fate and play football. I still have hope that he’s the kind of player who can deliver for at least a spell this season and just conjure up 6 goals in 8 games randomly.

I guess to be fair to him, he really wanted a move to City and that move materialised and was snatched away in the last hours of the window when he was probably Zooplaing mansions in Cheshire. I can see why that could have been a big personal blow, but I really thought it’d be over by now.

New York is a big city man, there’s always gonna be people who don’t watch much television, or people who don’t watch comedy. It probably takes them longer to get footage good enough for the show to be fair, we just don’t see the hundreds of times they get recognised.

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They can just do what The Real Hustle did and wear terrible moustaches.

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Getting so much on my nerves FFS! Pass the damn ball!