Long-term view: Arsenal do not deserve Sanchez
Rarely have I been so aggravated, in that swiftly passing but very real way that football elicits, as when I read a Mediawatch from this week that covered Martin Keown’s latest attempt to show what a solid bloke he is by being myopically, slavishly loyal to Arsenal.
To paraphrase the latest wisdom from the guy with a head like a tennis ball: Who does Sanchez think he is, eh? You won’t believe what he did – he came in on his day off and made the staff put on extra training for him. I mean, does he respect the club Gary, or doesn’t he?
My teeth grit as I can practically see old tennis-ball head leaning in with absolute sincerity written all over him, asking that question.
Picture what actually happened. Sanchez, fired by his natural exuberance, his commitment to the game and his will to be an elite athlete – all qualities you wouldn’t say the Arsenal squad as a whole is overly furnished with – came in on his day off for extra training. That’s right Martin, you get on with your Daily Mail column about what that behaviour represents, but back in the real world we all know by now what Sanchez represents – something Arsenal no longer deserve.
In sporting terms, they just got lucky to get him. They got lucky that this A-grade player, like Zlatan before him, still couldn’t fit into a Barcelona team that at the time was almost entirely engulfed by Lionel Messi in its attacking approach.
There was nothing flawed or damaged about the goods, as some of the British press’ straw-man merchants have occasionally tried to make out. His season prior to signing yielded 19 league goals; and beyond the stats, he gave off the feeling that players rarely do: that their combination of aggression and technical excellence could transcend any national borders. And so it has proved.
Incidentally, it seems like all but Brazilian South Americans come with this hardwired; the elite of Luis Suarez, Sergio Aguero, Diego Godin, Pablo Zabaleta and Edinson Cavani have that roughness with their talent to make it happen in any league. In the other corner is Diego Forlan but hey, it’s football, there’s always someone who proves there are no rules.
At pretty much any club but Barcelona, you would happily gear any attack around Sanchez, something that Wenger cottoned on to pretty late, leaving him for far too long to mop up the beta-football stylings of Olivier Giroud, with good old Theo running up to the byline and beyond on the opposite flank.
Only relatively recently, and only for a while, did Wenger seem to realise that when you have in your team the player I’d put only behind Aguero as the best natural finisher in the league, you should have the sense, as he used to have the sense with players like Henry and Anelka, to put them front and centre, regardless of whatever paternal affection you might feel for poor Olivier.
Somehow, with what is now beyond pitiful stubbornness, Wenger has found his way back to that approach, except with Danny Welbeck for added spice, and basically if you make Sanchez play with Giroud and Welbeck, you probably don’t deserve him.
In ethical terms there’s no probably about it. And before we get into it – I truly do know it’s only football. You shouldn’t take anything I say too seriously. But – football is the briefest of careers, and Sanchez will never enjoy his life’s absolute prime again. He spent it on a cause that in hindsight you realise was pointless from the outset, amid a calcified regime and a collection of passengers at a club that was last truly competitive in, I don’t know, 2008? Competitive, if it’s even worth saying, is absolutely, fundamentally, not the same thing as ‘almost competitive’.
But never once do I remember Sanchez sinking for any significant amount of time to the level of a passenger; and the reason I think it’s unethical for Arsenal to claim they deserve any ongoing loyalty from him is that they’ve never shown any to him.
Rather than recognise the increasingly desperate attempts he made to drag the club to a level that matched his own evident self-respect, and reward that by signing players who could lighten the load, he is now surrounded by a team that, when eggs are truly eggs and if you remove Laurent Koscielny from the basket, are a bunch of flakes.
Welbeck will never be talented enough to be confident, despite the work-rate, Francis Coquelin has something, if not his brain, engaged, and Hector Bellerin is too young and callow for it to be worth calling. Those you can make excuses for. As for the rest, and you know who we’re talking about, it is grievous mismanagement, of a kind alien to Spurs and Chelsea, to allow them to look to their most talented footballer for everything, including inspirational effort.
In technical terms, they don’t deserve him simply because now they can’t even pretend to offer football at the level where he belongs, although just down the road there’s obviously a club who could. Please, Arsene, leave, and let those Arsenal fans have something of a clean shot at remembering your excellence; a clean shot that now with the absolute fart-in-a-life that’s heading their way, i.e missing the Champions League, presumably losing the FA Cup final to Chelsea and then handing your best player over to them on the cheap in the summer, will require some very committed long-sightedness to enjoy.
Sanchez will, I’m sure, have noticed how Chelsea have played this season. Elite-level commitment all over the place – compare Willian to Walcott – spearheaded from the manager down, and a potential to be dominant I don’t think any other English club nears. You know exactly how Chelsea will line up next season, formation-wise, and how they’re going to play. And if it’s Sanchez instead of Costa, there’ll be less sh*thousery and even more quality, and an attacking line-up that could go toe to toe with any club in Europe. Imagine instead sitting in the dressing room, gazing at Olivier Giroud making his hair immaculate, before heading out into the Bernabeu.
And if Wenger simply does that shrug and the brow-furrow and the ‘this is football’ line, in response to losing what will always be an irreplaceable player, even Martin Keown might struggle to gild that one.
Toby Sprigings – follow him on Twitter here