Arsenal: Timo Werner gives massive boost in replacing Alexis Sanchez

Arsenal will be on the hunt for attackers to replace Alexis Sanchez and possibly Mesut Ozil, and Timo Werner is an excellent place to start.

Arsenal’s attack is starting to put the pieces together, even without Alexis Sanchez. But that doesn’t mean we should stand idly by and stare at his exit without raising a finger. Arsene Wenger has indicated that replacing Alexis will cost another £60-70m and that is a daunting proposition for the notoriously stingy club.

But there are still some cheeky signings they can make to try to maximize a bit of cleverness, along with a bit of personal favoritism.

Enter Timo Werner. While at Stuttgart, Werner was good, not great. He was a teenager with phenomenal pace and solid abilities around the goal and looked like he could fill the largely vacant starting striker role with the German National team.

Then he made the move to RB Leipzig and suddenly, he was on everyone’s radar. Just 20 years old and scoring 21 goals and adding five assists in 2400 minutes? Yeah, that’s something to pay attention too.

This year has gotten off to yet another hot start and Werner has spoken out about his future. While RB Leipzig have burst onto the scene and could potentially stand to become a ‘big club’ in the near future, Wenger has indicated that he prefers a move to England, since they have more big teams than Spain or Germany.

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And, in the process of listing those teams, guess who he mentioned first?

Arsenal.

At first I thought he had just memorized them in alphabetical order, as Chelsea followed, but that wasn’t the case. Werner thought first of the Gunners and forgive me for my blind optimism, but that sounds like interest.

Even if it is nothing more than coincidental, Werner is an excellent candidate to consider when pursuing potential Alexis replacements. I still stand by my belief that to replace Alexis doesn’t necessarily all have to come through one man. It can come through two highly talented men with a great deal of potential.

Of which Werner is one.

The lad is tremendously talented, has grown into some serious goal scoring boots and has the ambition you want to see from someone craving a move to a bigger stage. And while Leipzig will no doubt want to capitalize on a hefty price tag, it’s hard to imagine him costing all that close to Wenger’s £60-70m budget to replace the Chilean.

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Meaning that we could land Werner and one other potential upshot to replace a once-irreplaceable Alexis. And maybe I’m in the minority here, but ditching Alexis for some young stars that can grow with the club gets me pretty jazzed up.

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