Arsene Wenger says Manchester City have yet to contact Arsenal about signing Alexis Sanchez during the January transfer window.
The Chile international looks a cert to leave the Emirates although it’s still unclear whether that will be for a reduced transfer fee in the coming weeks or on a free at the end of the season when his contract runs out. The player is already eligible to sign a pre-contract agreement with a non-English club.
It’s suggested that Pep Guardiola could be willing to spend around £25 million to secure Sanchez early but Wenger insists there’s no sign of that at the moment.
“No,” was the boss’ response when asked if he’d heard anything from the Etihad. “I expect nothing. I am focused on tomorrow’s game. When solicitations happen, you respond to it. At the moment, it’s very quiet.”
Asked again if he’d consider selling the player in the coming days, he added: “I have nothing to add to what I said before on that.”
The boss also made clear he’s not concerned about interest in Sanchez and Mesut Ozil from continental outfits, hinting that the players’ wage demands could only be met by a few top clubs.
“No, it is not a big concern because I believe most of the players today want to play in the Premier League and the Premier League can pay contracts and wages that no other club – apart from three or four clubs abroad – can pay. Overall that is not my main concern.”
Sell him, let City win the league every year for the next fifteen seasons so we don’t have to bother wasting our time trying anymore and hopefully we might win the League Cup once or twice along the way. Huzzah!
Why do we have to sell him to City – cant we sell him somewhere else? Like PSG? Juve? Munich? Just anywhere else than here, because I am beyond bored of watching our former players score against us.
The problem is, if he wants to go to City, we have to sell him to City, or not sell him at all and he will go to City for free in May.
Fucking awful position to be in. We probably should have cashed in in the summer, but many people (me included) were clammering to make him see out his contract. Also, he’s been a bit shit this season.
This is exactly why I was saying we should’ve sold him in the summer.
He had to go, to prevent us from ending up in this position. But here we are.
A genuinely awful decision from Arsene.
Yeh just sell him to anyone eho doesn’t want to buy the selfish arrogant twat!
Unfortunately we can’t sell him abroad, he could literally sign a pre contract for any overseas team now for free and just join in the summer.
Thats fine – I genuinely do not care about getting any money for him, since I am not a bean counter.
Although when you consider Coutinho is going for £145M, Alexis is worth that amount easily.
I just don’t want him rocking up at Manchester City.
As Arsene said only a few clubs can meet his wage demands from abroad.
The sad fact is ManCity have pockets that are very very deep, and they are doing what other big clubs have done in other elagues, take the best players from thier rivals to make their rivals weaker and them stronger. Mancity will be the dominant league team for years to come.
I don’t think Sanchez quite has 15 years in him still
Yep that’s why Sanchez and Ozil are waiting to become free agents… reduced wages but hello sign-on fee!
Is it hard to sell Theo for 30 million and offer sign-on fee of 15 million each to Mesut and Sanchez to keep them and increase their wages? I’m sure we can promote our U-21 players to take up Theo’s spot. I don’t believe we are far away from United,Chelsea,Liverpool. Every club in the country is far away from City at the moment but if we keep our best players i’m sure we can catch them in the next 2-3 seasons. Getting into the CL is crucial IMO. We have been fucked by the referees this season but i think… Read more »
They don’t want to stay. And can you really blame them? Take off your fan blinders for a minute, why would either Alexis or Ozil want to stay with a team that is clearly on the down when they could move to teams that are clearly on the up?
Ozil I think would be happy at Arsenal if they paid him what he is demanding. He gets to play the game he wants to play at Arsenal.
Alexis though wants trophies. And big money. He wont get both at Arsenal so is happy to depart, which is evident by the way he carries himself on the park at moment.
Getting thumbs down for speaking sense.
He gets the 25M we would take and puts it right into his pocket. Can’t say I blame him. As it stands, I would screw over Wenger for pint.
Can I politely ask you and your opinion to fuck off
If you can’t take differing opinions, may I politely suggest an internet football forum is the last place you should be commenting on?
No, you can’t. Read the rules please: http://news.arseblog.com/comment-policy/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gSQg1i_q2g
We need to get what we can for players like Sanchez, Debuchy, Walcott and Coquelin now before they leave on a free (Sanchez) or their value drops further.
Too little, too late. Grasping at straws. Not going to happen. I don’t think anyone in their right mind at City would throw 250m at Arsenal to have Alexis for half a season – a season they’ve all but won already. It would be utter madness.
Not necessarily. Remember, Jesus picked up a nasty injury, there are tons of games coming up and one more injury would give them problems. Plus, 25m to them is nothing. It would be utter madness for a club who cannot afford it (i.e. us), but they can easily. Whether Sanchez leaves now or not I would rather see his replacement arrive now rather than banking on something happening in the summer. With Liverpool having 70m burning a hole in their pocket, after selling Coutinho and buying Van Dijk, that would easily get them Mahrez or most of the payment towards… Read more »
“Jesus picked up a nasty injury”
He’ll rise in 3 days.
hahaha pure comedy genius.
someone needs to take over our transfer strategy as it’s just beyond stupid at this point. wait until Monaco sells everyone so Lemar’s price goes up from 40 to 90 – and then he turns us down to boot. spend all summer saying we won’t sell sanchez- and then accept an offer we knew was coming for months. now we are talking about selling him for less than 1/2 of what we would have 4 months ago. give huge wages to le coq and then decide less than 12 months later we don’t want him. try to get rid of… Read more »
Don’t forget turn down 20m for chambers and then only play him in the b team once in a while destroying his confidence in the meantime
fed up with this and personally, I am not fretting over this any more, let him go….matter of fact, might even end up being a good thing for team dynamics, regardless of whatever, Arsenal will still continue to be a great club, with or without him, so he can fuck right off!
To convince Sanchez to stay, Wenger must leave!
Is there any evidence for that whatsoever? I am not arguing Wenger should stay or Sanchez be sold or anything else–just that I have no reason to believe, and I don’t think anyone else does, that Sanchez is leaving because of Wenger or that he would more likely stay if Wenger left. Perhaps, in these times, I am just a little sensitive to people making things up and trying to pass them off as facts.
Sanchez is leaving because he doesn’t believe Wenger could deliver trophies. Even if Arsenal paid him what City did, he would still move to city, cos … Wenger.
Was it not reported last season that Sanchez would stay if Wenger left and that Ozil would stay if Wenger stayed. Caused a few debates about who we’d want to keep of the two.
So, unless those reports were lies, it’s not too far fetched to think that Sanchez would want to leave because of Wenger…
There have been loads of ‘reports’ saying every possible option/angle on every single possibility concerning Sanchez and AFC. You’d need some evidence to believe any of them…
LOL!
He’s known to be a liar. We know they’ve approached stop treating us like morons.
The price of guaranteeing 39 points (which should have been 41 or 43) from 22 matches– is the cost of keeping Sanchez until January. Basically, insurance against relegation. And still– an outside chance at a CL place. Not a very good outside chance– but one that 14 other PL clubs don’t have. Not that it’s a satisfying prospect– but it is the reality. At this juncture, I might be good with selling Alexis to City. Hard to believe he would make them that much better in the PL. Though IMO he’d likely thrive in this season’s CL and the FA… Read more »
Why would City approach us now? Far better to undermine us through the press for the next few weeks and then make a rock bottom offer at midday on transfer deadline day. If they get him they get him, if they don’t we have an unhappy player sowing more discontent for the next few months and get him for free in the summer, a win win situation for them.
All the uncertainty, gossip and rumours damages us but this is the (ideal) situation we’ve put ourselves in so it shouldn’t be a surprise. We’ve become a complete basketcase.
What will it do to sanchez’ ego tho? I’d laugh my head off if nobody came for him then we put him on the bench, but NEVER sent him on! Or didn’t let him train with the others and made him stay away match days!
I don’t think he’d care that much. No World Cup keep in match shape for, plenty time to sort out a pre-contract and full pre-seaon to get back in shape for whoever he wants at the start of next. Dropping him to the bench would have worked in August, not now.
You really think Sanchez wouldn’t go mad sitting on the bench?
He’d be down at the nearest playing field having a kick around with the kids in a desperate effort to get his fix.
You know your transfer policy is rock solid when 2 of your best players will leave and it isn’t your main concern.
If this time we have a replacement like Mahrez, it’d be ok to sell him.
“This just in, city have been linked with mahrez,” is what everything will say until city get all the players. They’re going to run the wages, fees, etc so high that no one else can afford the players.
Every agent will link their players with city because it means more money for them in fees.
And then city will send them all out on loan, so none of them can play against them!
I think the rest of the team will be keen to show the world still turns when he goes. I worry about our motivation to close teams down when he’s not playing but even so, it’s time the face the inevitable.
Maybe use the money to make the Ozil contract offer more attractive.
There are only 3 clubs in the Premier league which will be able to afford top quality players in the future, and we aren’t one of them. The billionaire oil money model means that only these clubs will be able to buy players and you’ll see the concentration of talent at them like we’ve seen in other leagues across europe.
“apart from three or four clubs abroad”
World Class clubs are the only ones able to afford World Class players.
More at 10.
Bayern won’t be paying the same salaries as PSG/$iteh/Real etc for a few years.
Does that mean they won’t be ‘World Class’?
We should be selling one of our top assets now. BUT proviso we bring two technical players in in exchange (which also means we should shift out the limited Walcott) That of course is unlikely to happen which is the problem. Everything will be in danger of being kicked down to the summer when prices will hike further and we will have double whammy impact of the World Cup which will delay our decision making way into the season and affect the start of our campaign yet again. Sounds familiar? If City want Alexis even for 25m, I say sell.… Read more »
Sounds like Arsene is saying Ozil will be going to United on a free next summer. 🙁
Sell that piece of Garbage already !
It saddens me so much that we had players like Sanchez and Ozil and couldnt win anything big with them, what amazing talent. Id be happy to see them leave now they deserve to be playing at a club with actual ambition to win major trophies. I feel sorry for them more than i do for the manager. It sickens me to say that they wasted good years of their careers at arsenal, and its the truth.
“I am focussed on tomorrow’s game”. Right, great, but the idea is that you have a team of people so that we don’t lose focus on all these things. Like we always do… to our detriment… Arsene. Seriously had enough of him. Respect is there but it does get tested from time to time despite everything, it really does.