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Arsenal: Alexis Sanchez key to the season for new reasons
By Josh Sippie
Arsenal’s situation with Alexis Sanchez may be getting stickier following the last second fall-through of his sale, which makes him a new key to the season.
Arsenal seemed to be entering a new golden age when they secured Alexis Sanchez in 2015, but that was pretty short lived. The same shortcomings plagued the club and they always seemed to be one step behind the rest of the top clubs in the league.
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Through it all though, Alexis became a huge key to the season. One of the main catalysts to success would always be the performance of the Chilean.
Following his near-deal with Manchester City that saw the Gunners fail to land Thomas Lemar as the last moment to replace Alexis, he is being forced to trudge on with the Gunners, a team he no doubt doesn’t want to be with anymore.
The reports have been pretty staggering. Stewart Robson thinks that Alexis will spend most of the season “injured” while numerous other opinions out there offer a spattering of embarrassments. Such things as that Alexis celebrated with his Chilean team mates when he thought he was going to City. Alexis told all his family and friends he was finally going to City.
Not stuff to be proud of, that’s for sure.
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Through it all, he is still a Gunner. And that makes things incredibly interesting because this whole “Alexis being a key to the season” thing takes a whole new spin. He still is a key to the season, but in a new light. It used to be just because he was our best player. Now it’s because he’s pissed off and wants to leave.
The reason Wenger didn’t sell Alexis was because he couldn’t find a replacement (even though he did find one). But what if Alexis refuses to play? What if he has no motivation out there on the pitch? Then we will be suffering enough from his toxicity and we won’t have anyone to replace him with.
As such, a huge key to the season is getting Alexis to play as though he wants to be here. Which might be an impossible task, but it has to happen. You can’t have such a big personality on the pitch leaching all of the cohesion out of the squad.
Motivation is the key issue anyway, and Alexis was always one of the few fonts of motivation. Turn off that source, and how does the team react?
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These are all things we will have to watch out for. We face Bournemouth at home next, which should bring about a massively toxic atmosphere along with whatever Alexis decides to do.