It is fair to say the the future of Alexis Sanchez continues to be one of the major stories of the summer transfer window and as long as he remains an Arsenal player we can expect to see numerous more stories about the Chilean hitman.
Sanchez is entering the last year of his contract and as a result as long as a potential move to another club is delayed or signing a new contract with Arsenal is being negotiated, he is going to be a major source of questions for Arsene Wenger and the club and therefore will become a bigger and bigger distraction as time passes.
Word got out over the past few days according to Metro that the agent for Alexis Sanchez and the player himself met PSG’s sporting Director in a Paris hotel this week and a French newspaper (Le Parisien) reported that the player and PSG agreed on a 4 year contract which will pay Sanchez in the neighbourhood of £275,000 a week.
As the report goes PSG feel they can convince Arsenal to acccept a fee of around £36million which seems like a bit of a joke when you consider what other players who compare to Sanchez are getting in the transfer market. Romelu Lukaku’s transfer fee was reportedly £75million for his move to Manchester United from Everton and Alvaro Morata’s transfer fee at around £58million plus add-ons for his move to Chelsea from Real Madrid suggests Alexis is worth well over £60million.
When asked about the potetial deal after Arsenal went down to a 3-0 defeat to Chelsea in Beijing yesterday the Arsenal manager replied: ‘It’s only media imagination.’
When Wenger was asked if moving to a team not in the Premier League would make a deal for Sanchez possible the manager said: ‘No, it doesn’t make any difference.’
So Arsene Wenger seems resolute in saying that Sanchez is staying at Arsenal to complete his contract but we all know that this could well just be posturing to make the transfer fee increase.
Manchester City and Chelsea seemed very interested in Alexis Sanchez earlier on this year but whether a massive bid from either side would sway Arsenal is a big question – one thing a move to either team would do is see Sanchez playing in the Champions League which is something which the player sees as a condition of him playing for a club.
We will have to just wait and see but the whole Sanchez affair is increasingly becoming a media circus which is bound to effect the team negatively so perhaps the Gunners would do better to move the Chilean striker on and bring in a player who definitely wants to wear the red and white of Arsenal.