Pep Guardiola failed in his effort in the summer to sign Arsenal’s star forward but the club’s youthful front line has blossomed without the Chilean this seasonYou can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes – and you’re not too scarred by a complex, deadline-week, dual-jurisdiction triple-swoop involving both Raheem Sterling and Thomas Lemar – you might find you get what you need.Manchester City might have been flying even higher at the top of the league and have scored more than their 35 goals had Alexis Sánchez signed from Arsenal in late August. Who knows, as the fixture list starts to bite, City’s fans may look on their brilliant but callow front line and think wistfully of...
The forward’s outpourings of frustration after Chile’s latest defeats suggest that retaining him is not the coup Arsenal might present it as, yet he remains key to dragging them out of their current messIn a little under a week, Alexis Sánchez’s life has been turned upside down. When the Arsenal forward woke up last Thursday, on transfer deadline day, he was assured that he would complete his endlessly trailed move to Manchester City; the one he had wanted and made no secret about pushing for.It did not happen for a number of reasons, chief among them Arsenal’s failure to close an incoming deal for Monaco’s Thomas Lemar, despite an offer to the French champions of €100m (£92m). Related: Alexis Sánchez...
Virgil van Dijk, Philippe Coutinho and Alexis Sánchez are just three of the refuseniks who will have to buckle downA penny for someone’s thoughts seems a ludicrously old-fashioned saying in the era of the £1.4bn Premier League transfer window. But now the whole brouhaha is over it is hard not to wonder what is going on inside the heads of players whose hopes were dashed on deadline day. It is the football world’s equivalent of being stood up for a dream date. Wake up full of nervous expectancy, impossible to think about anything else all day, then the wretched waiting before the bleak realisation that nothing special is going to happen.So what now for Virgil van Dijk and Philippe Coutinho,...
Manchester City’s manager has the raw material so why is he not bringing the best out of such players rather than attempting to buy other clubs’ top performers like Alexis Sánchez?The final days and hours of the transfer window seem to be conforming to the usual pattern, the one that makes everyone wonder why, if clubs can get so much done in so short a time, they could not have compressed all their business into a few selected weeks of the close season.The possibility of Alexis Sánchez moving from Arsenal to Manchester City is one that already seems to have been around for several lifetimes and there are even claims the Arsenal players are now hoping it goes through because...
Will Arsène Wenger give new first-team coach Jens Lehmann direct influence for a season with a Thursday-Sunday rhythm and potential ins and outs unresolved?Guardian writers’ predicted position: 6th (NB: this is not necessarily Amy Lawrence’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)Last season’s position: 5th Related: Arsène Wenger: Mesut Özil standoff could work in Arsenal’s favour Related: Transfer window 2017 – every deal in Europe's top five leagues Continue reading...