Arsenal lose yet again if Sanchez fades away
ALExIS SANCHEz sat on the bench, his blue shirt pulled up, hiding his face, engulfing his head. This could well be his last season at Arsenal. If so, it is already beginning to follow a familiar pattern.
‘It’s better to burn out, than to fade away,’ sang Neil Young, but that’s not how they do things at Arsenal. Few of the greats enjoy blazing last hurrahs. Most leave, not to cheers, but muted applause at the end of long and exhausting transfer sagas.
Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, Cesc Fabregas, all had forgettable final seasons. Henry was injured, Vieira could not hope to match the Invincible campaign, Fabregas was a shadow of his previous self. Already a sense of foreboding tracks Sanchez.
Absent for the first two games, he was started at Liverpool in what turned out to be one of the poorest performances under Arsene Wenger. Much of the summer it was thought he would be sold. Now, just as likely is an equally standard Arsenal finale, the slow retreat into irrelevance.
Sanchez’s contract is up at the end of the season. At what point does the need to protect his lucrative free transfer outweigh his motivation to serve Arsenal, certainly if there is little to play for?
Time is allowed to drag at Arsenal; everything becomes a soap. We now know the manager was always going to stay and the club always wanted him. Yet somehow the tale of Wenger’s new contract was allowed to overshadow the second half of last season.
It is the same with player departures. Endless debilitating rounds of will-he, won’t-he. Robin van Persie seemed the only one unaffected by it, scoring 37 goals in 48 games in his final season. Others have had the energy slowly sucked from them by the uncertainty.
It was hard to judge Sanchez on Sunday, given that it was his first match of the season, he was withdrawn early, and got such poor service in the time he was on the pitch — but already there are worrying signs.
WEHAVE been here before. By the start of 2010-11, Barcelona had already made clear an intention to retrieve Fabregas and it was common knowledge the player wanted to go. Instead, he stayed for a last, insipid campaign. Fabregas scored 15 league goals in 2009-10. In his last year, he scored three.
Arsenal slipped to fourth place, were eliminated from the FA Cup at the quarter-final stage and Fabregas’s mistake gifted Barcelona a goal as Arsenal exited the Champions League in the last 16. He returned to Nou Camp in 2011 and, when he came back to England in 2014, Arsenal did not even challenge Chelsea for his services.
Henry was another who departed in underwhelming circumstances. David Dein, Arsenal’s former vice-chairman, confirmed two bids of £50million were turned down before Henry signed his contract in 2006. Had Arsenal accepted either offer, he would have been the most expensive player in the world. Instead, a whimper of a campaign unfolded, Henry playing what proved to be his last game for Arsenal on March 7, 2007, against PSV Eindhoven.
Groin and stomach injuries kept him out of the rest of the season and he was sold to Barcelona for half the money rejected 12 months earlier.
Even Vieira’s last season was a disappointment. True, it ended with him scoring the winning penalty in an FA Cup final shoot-out with Manchester United, but considering the previous season had seen Arsenal go unbeaten — the first club to do so since Victorian times — 2004-05 was not considered a vintage year at the time.
Nor were Vieira’s performances compared favourably to his best, and after several years of speculation involving Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus, he was allowed to join the Serie A club for £13.75m. Arsenal had his best years, but have never replaced him.
Of all the great players lost since the Invincible season, it is Vieira whose absence is felt the hardest.
The drift now continues with Sanchez. There is talk of a late offer from Manchester City, but, either way, Arsenal seem set to lose. If they sell, they are deprived of a stellar talent with no time to bring in a replacement. They get the money, but little else.
If they keep Sanchez, but with his contract winding down, can he be relied upon in a team so short of inspiration? Who, among his team- mates on Sunday, could rally a player seeing out his time?
There are few leaders at Arsenal, few who will provide the example or stimulus Sanchez needs to make his last season memorable. At Anfield, as he disappeared into an incongruously coloured shirt, he seemed a perfect metaphor for Arsenal’s malaise. Not burning out, just fading away; out of the blue, into the black.