Off the pitch, Arsene Wenger is the man at Arsenal football club. The 65-year-old Frenchman essentially runs the entire club and 17 consecutive years of Champions League football speaks for itself.
But once the whistle blows, there is not a single person of the 60,000 at the Emirates (on a good day), who outshines Alexis Sánchez, the £35 million man from Barcelona.
Don’t be surprised if this 3-0 thrashing of Manchester United last weekend seemed familiar because it was nearly identical to the Gunners’ 4-1 demolition of Liverpool at the Emirates last April. Héctor Bellerín opened the scoring against Liverpool, but Özil and Sánchez scored Arsenal’s second and third goal in the first half of both games.
Thierry Henry noted in his post-match analysis that the Chilean will invariably cut onto his right foot on the edge of the box. But when the finish is as good as it was last weekend and last April, why not?
After comparing these two games, the point is that the teams that spend the most money will inevitably be successful in one way or another. Although Arsenal became the only club in the top four leagues to not sign a single outfield player this summer, the combined £77.5 million transfer fee for Özil and Sánchez means there has been at least some departure from Wenger’s oppressive frugality of recent years.
And while Özil hasn’t yet justified the club transfer record fee paid for him, the 26-year-old playmaker is still the type of player who will make that genius pass that nobody else in the stadium could see. However, even the most brilliant of passes are meaningless if they don’t receive the finish they deserve. And Arsenal fans will be the first to tell you that this is often the case with Olivier Giroud, particularly in the big games in which the Gunners always seem to falter.
Other than Theo Walcott’s emergence as a top-class striker, the good news for these fans is that Sánchez is back in form. Every successful, trophy-winning team needs a talisman―someone who, despite overwhelming expectations, always seems to step up when his team needs him most.
The teams that dominate European football, like Bayern (Robben, Muller), Real (Ronaldo, Bale, Ramos), and Barcelona (Messi, Iniesta, Suarez, Neymar), have these types of players in abundance, but as Chelsea proved in 2011-12 (Drogba) and so to Atlético in 2013-14 (Costa), sometimes one is enough.
Robin Van Persie was that man for Arsenal, especially in his last season, but now it’s time for Sánchez to take the reins after a short stint by Aaron Ramsey. And for the most part, the Chilean has absolutely filled the shoes worn by RVP, Henry, and Bergkamp.
At the very start of his Arsenal career, he scored what should have been the winner against defending champions Manchester City. He then went on to score crucial Champions League goals against Dortmund, two goals in the FA Cup semi-final, and Arsenal’s second in the final against Aston Villa.
Never mind Sánchez’s contagious work-rate; his unstoppable strike in the FA Cup final is exactly the kind of out-of-nothing, against-the-run-of-play brilliance that Arsenal needs when the tough games inevitably get out of hand.
Eight assists and 16 goals in his first Premier League season is fantastic, and the Chilean looks on course to reach, if not improve upon, that benchmark this season. If Arsenal can avoid the sort of calamitous collapse that saw them lose at home to Olympiacos, Sánchez can drag his team to their first league title in over a decade.
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