Arsenal: Alexis Can Learn From This Arsenal Man

Arsenal have seen the form of Alexis Sanchez drop off ever since his monumental beginning, perhaps he can learn something from this Arsenal man.

When Alexis Sanchez first came to Arsenal, it was huge. I don’t even need to tell you how huge it was, even though I just did. Here was a bonafide scoring threat with more technical ability than he knew what to do with. It was magnificent.

To make matters even more magnificent, he was purchased by Arsenal in the same summer that Manchester United purchased Angel Di Maria. While the Argentine was flopping his way out of matches, Alexis was scoring. And while Di Maria was having run-ins with Louis Van Gaal, Alexis was still scoring.

It’s just what Alexis did. Premier League defenses didn’t know what to do with him. When he got the ball on the left, his incisive runs left them flat-footed and grasping at straws.

But this is the Premier League. Stuff like that gets figured out. It took all of half a season for Premier League teams to start anticipating what Alexis was going to do. His work rate and ability was still top notch, but his runs were being predicted and snuffed out. Arsenal suffered.

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That carried on, and on… and on. Alexis does not look as good as he did when he first arrived because his bag of tricks was actually rather barren. The few tricks he had were marvelous tricks, but he looks to have run out of ideas. So what can he do to rejuvenate that bag of ideas and figure out a new way to baffle defenses?

Well, I propose he spend a day with Joel Campbell. Or a week. The Costa Rican is as impromptu as they come. When you watch him play, you never know what he is going to do when he gets the ball. Literally. When Alexis gets it, he cuts in and keeps dribbling to his right until he finds and opening, which often takes him all the way to the right wing because teams see it coming.

Joel Campbell does not have that problem. If it looks like Campbell has much more space to make things happen than Alexis, that’s because he does. Defenders don’t know what he is going to do because he has built a reputation of enigmacity (that’s my new word). It’s become so noticeable that boos rained down from the stands when Wenger had the audacity to sub off the sharp right winger.