Arsenal, Alexis Sanchez and the diminishing fear of Bosman

Among football fans, pundits and journalists, there is a rampant fear of ‘losing a player for nothing’. From the panicked “we’ll have to sell him or we’ll lose him for nothing”, to the seemingly wise ‘the club will be forced to sell this summer or risk losing him for nothing’. The fear undoubtedly still exists at the lower levels of football, where allowing a £300,000 asset to walk away would be financial suicide, but for the world’s richest clubs there is no Bosman-phobia; the numbers involved are just too small to be scary.

If Arsenal had a pound for every time they have been warned that they could lose Alexis Sanchez for nothing, they could probably offer him the £400,000-a-week contract he craves. And yet they are impervious to the threat because the club is worth £1.5bn, which makes the Chilean’s potential transfer fee only 3.33% of their worth. It’s not a drop in the ocean, but nor is it a potentially devastating tsunami. As ludicrous at it may sound, they do not need that £50m; it’s certainly not enough to a) weaken their squad and b) strengthen a Premier League rival’s squad. It’s difficult to know what figure would tip that balance, but it would certainly take more than eight figures to write out in full.

Perhaps the story would have been different if Bayern Munich had been willing to spend £132m over the next four years on a 28-year-old, and PSG may yet test that resolve, but Arsenal are absolutely right to resist any pressure to sell to Manchester City. One season of one of the Premier League’s finest players in an Arsenal shirt > £50m and the strengthening of a rival, especially when that rival snatched Samir Nasri, Emmanuel Adebayor, Gael Clichy and Kolo Toure in far more financially straitened times. One top-six Premier League side should no longer sell anything other than overpriced, unwanted goods to another.

That new reality has not yet reached the majority of those outside the world’s richest clubs, who still see a loss of £50m as frightening, strengthened by the fear of a player ‘sulking’ or ‘downing tools’. That may well be true of some disaffected fringe players, but can you really envisage the ultra-competitive Sanchez just deciding not to bother? After all, this is the man Martin Keown called “a difficult man to manage” because he turned up on his days off asking for extra training sessions.

Sanchez has apparently been informed of Arsenal’s stance and has not made any threats of effectively going on strike; the club would not have adopted this position were they not sure that the Chilean – who has only even been criticised for playing too many games – would give them a full season of effort. Arsenal have to believe that a full season of effort from an irreplaceable player, plus the addition of a bona fide goalscorer, minus Champions League football, will deliver a top-four place with ease. Should that happen, it will be worth far more than £50m in direct and indirect income; Arsenal are not Manchester United and would not survive a prolonged absence from the top table, either in terms of player recruitment or sponsorship deals.

For a precedent, we look to Germany and Robert Lewandowski, with Borussia Dortmund deciding to forego a transfer fee from Bayern Munich in 2013 to keep the Pole for another season and lose him in 2014 for nothing; he ended the season as the top goalscorer in the Bundesliga and with no lingering doubts that he had ‘downed tools’. Professional footballers for the most part behave professionally and Dortmund may have lost out on a transfer fee but they kept their dignity and had the luxury of spending just £11m on the potential of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang rather than being forced to over-pay for a player who would have come with the cumbersome label of ‘the new Lewandowski’.

Four years after Dortmund made a stance against bullying, Arsenal are ready to do the same. And this time, it is not merely stubbornness; it makes complete financial sense to cling onto the soaring bird in your hand when you’re not sure whether those in the bush can even get off the ground. Free transfer? There’s absolutely nothing to fear.

Sarah Winterburn