Alexis Sanchez doesn’t want to be at Arsenal any more.
Wenger says he does.
But the manager is kidding himself and us.
Arsenal’s best player is 28 and he’s finally realised that this team is going nowhere.
So he’s wasting the best years of his career with an outfit that doesn’t have a winning mentality and employs far too many inconsistent and half-talented players.
Yes, Sanchez was a Barcelona reject.
They sold him to pay for Luis Suarez and that bold move paid off with multiple trophies
On Wednesday night thousands of Arsenal fans didn’t fancy the game. One of my Gooner friends said the crowd looked about 39,000. He’d never seen to many empty seats, swathes of them.
Leicester defended their box tenaciously, using as many players as it took, and broke occasionally.
Arsenal are their bogey team, having won 14 of their 21 Premier League meetings and drawn the other seven.
Even in their title-winning season, when the Leicester only lost three games, two of those were against Arsenal.
After 86 minutes a Montreal shot that was going yards wide deflected past Schmeichel of the chest of Robert Huth. A fluke goal, a gift from heaven, but that happens in football, sometimes for you, sometimes against.
Sanchez should have been happy that Arsenal were winning, that they had three points in the bag after a dull game on a cold night in front of a small crowd.
Left back Fuchs has a good long throw and wanted to toss one into the box to create a match-saving chance.
When Sanchez ignored the rules and got in his face, the left back was annoyed because time was running out. Sanchez was told twice to stand back two yards from the Fuchs throw-in, as the new rule states. But he ignored that instruction and Fuchs got very annoyed and threw the ball at the shoulder of Sanchez, who thought about it and then collapsed holding his face.
Pathetic behaviour? Clearly.
Was it a symptom of a more general frustration. I think so.
Arsenal are still fighting for Top Four to keep Wenger among Europe’s elite coaches.
But Alexis Sanchez knows in his bones that this team is a million miles from being able to win the Champions League, and a very long way from even reaching a semi-final.
Sanchez badly needs a change of scenery.
If he stays at Arsenal, he’ll regret next season more than this one.