Arsenal: Henrikh Mkhitaryan already has one up on Alexis Sanchez

Arsenal will have to find a way to compensate without Alexis Sanchez, but Henrikh MKhitaryan will help. He does, after all, already have one up on the Chilean.

Now that the Alexis Sanchez and Henrikh Mkhitaryan have finally completed their move, the media certainly won’t stop talking about it. Everyone wants to know who got the better end of the deal, Arsenal or Manchester United.

Thankfully, the consensus is pretty fair and accurate – they both won. They both got exactly what they wanted.

From an Arsenal perspective, I’d argue that they got a pretty steep upgrade. Not in every individual category, but in the ones that matter.

Alexis was never the best fit for Arsenal. I say that with my 20/20 hindsight, because at the time, every high-profile new signing feels like a great idea. But the longer he stayed, the more the frustration set in.

Alexis is a selfish player. He really settled into that profile with the Gunners. He’s not a selfish person, and I don’t mean to say that he is a selfish player as a means to criticize him, it’s just his style. When he gets the ball, his priority is to settle in and figure out what he himself can do.

If a team mate can help, great. But oftentimes they cannot.

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Even in his prime, there were times when Alexis seemed to clog the supply line. It’s just his style of play. I still recall when Arsene Wenger willingly sat a healthy Alexis in November of 2014 because he was not gelling with the attack. He was trying to do his own thing.

At the time, we were all pretty livid at this decision, but as time went on, it became clearer why. Arsene Wenger has a very specific image for what he wants out of this club and Alexis was not exactly contributing to that image. He was contributing to the success, no doubt. But he was distancing himself from the team play that Wenger so idealized.

Alexis was always a tremendous player whose pros outweighed his cons. But in Wenger’s unending search for perfection, the Chilean was far from perfect.

Next: Arsenal's Ideal XI With Henrikh Mkhitaryan

We don’t know yet how well Mkhitaryan will fit in, but, ideally, he will be much closer to perfect. Maybe he doesn’t have the same individual capacities as Alexis, but in terms of utilizing the essence of team play, he has a major one-up on the man he is here to replace.