Arsenal: The harsh truth that Alexis Sanchez must understand

Arsenal used to be grossly dependent on Alexis Sanchez, but as he walks back into the first team picture, he needs to understand something.

Alexis Sanchez has been gifted a clear lane back into the Arsenal starting XI thanks to the injury of Danny Welbeck, who was in good enough form to keep the Chilean out of the starting picture in the first place.

Alexis has only played 102 Premier League minutes going into the fixture against West Brom and he has yet to tally any sort of stat in those minutes.

Safe to say this is not a situation we could have ever anticipated given how big the Chilean was to this team no more than a year ago. Ever since his arrival, he has been indispensable, playing every single minute that he was possibly capable of playing.

I’m still not sure what I think about him being here, and from the looks of it, not many others are as well, as their is a divide of opinions between whether his want-away attitude will be a distraction or whether he is professional enough to get past that and still be a big piece of this attack.

That’s why I think the West Brom match will be the biggest match in Alexis’s North London career. There is one major truth that may seem harsh, but Alexis needs to understand it – he is not beyond reproach anymore. Arsene Wenger made that clear when he pointed out the lack of a hierarchy and I do believe that he was serious.

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Alexis is auditioning for playing time against the Baggies. He has to be. When Welbeck comes back, it would be a near crime to sit the Englishman when he has earned that role.

That is, unless Alexis can prove himself again.

The Chilean is certainly a professional and I don’t think he would treat this like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain did against Liverpool. I just hope that Wenger is serious about this hierarchy thing because if so, West Brom is his chance to light a fire under Alexis’s arse. This is his chance to get the Chilean’s Arsenal engine running again.

Because if there is one thing we know about Alexis, it’s that he wants to play. That’s all he wants. He wants to play and he wants to improve and he can’t do that if he is sitting. That gives him incentive enough to put his best foot forward and make a statement.

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That, and if he ever did have any love for this club, which I’m sure he did, this would be another nice pocket of fuel to draw from.

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