By Daily Sports on March 7, 2017

Some clubs do have them. That player, who is the most talented, gives one hundred percent or more during training sessions and matches; wouldn't want to lose a game; has a winning mentality that's infectious, but who lashes out at everyone else in his team for not having enough talent and becomes extremely difficult to manage when results go wrong. In the English Premier League, that player is Arsenal's Chilean forward Alexis Sanchez.

To say that Arsenal are in a crisis mode now is simply to state the obvious. They are wobbling in the premiership, as direct rivals are waging a serious assault on their cherished top four status. Their manager Arsene Wenger is under heavy pressure to quit after two decades in the club's saddle, as the fans feel the club is still too far away from winning a major title under the Frenchman. Added to the foreboding scenario is the contract situation of the two best players of the team, Mesut Ozil and Sanchez. Their present contracts have a year left to run and in football terms, they are actually up at the end of this season because no business - thinking club would allow its finest assets to leave at their prime without getting some sell-on cash for them. The players are stalling on renewing their contracts and its up for debate whether its purely for financial reasons or something that has to do with their perceptions on the sporting ambitions, or perceived lack of it, of the Gunners.

Sanchez is, however, doing his utmost to show that he's dissatisfied with the performance of his teammates and his manager in the pitch. In full public glare. Either by his waving on his midfielders to press opponents defences with him and then gesticulating in frustration when a quick pass is not made, or his squatting on the pitch in utter frustration after a loss, it is quite clear that the Chilean is unhappy and needs a move away.

News emanating from the Arsenal camp suggests that Sanchez attitude in training has become so poor and that he has had a fall out with his teammates and manager and storming out of the training pitch, which culminated in his being axed from the team's the starting line up in the 1-3 loss against Liverpool.

There's this romanticizing of the success of big clubs with regard to players with gigantic egos confronting each other as a necessary means to club success. We hear stories of how Alex Ferguson's players at Manchester United would have a stormy post-match analysis of their performance and point fingers at each other over a dereliction of duties. We hear of Arsenal's 'unbeaten' team of 2003/4 and how they would look each other squarely in the face and not be afraid to remind themselves of the need to put some more efforts in the pitch so that they could achieve their collective aims of winning. Sanchez represents that breed of players and more.

Reminding teammates, confronting them even, about their duties is not in itself bad. But making a public show of this, when you're obviously the top player of the side and sulking unnecessarily when you’re substituted, as he awkwardly did when substituted late in the game after scoring and with Arsenal leading 4-0 against Swansea some months ago, is childish of a player of the status of Sanchez.

There's a thin line between pushing your teammate to be better and an attitude that borders on overbearing. Sanchez should know how he would have felt if an obviously more technically talented Lionel Messi had openly berated him for a lack of technical or tactical know-how at Barcelona.

Sanchez may certainly be privately echoing the arguments of many who feel he's justified for wanting out because Wenger has not bought stars big enough to complement his skills to ensure Arsenal win major titles. That's a valid sentiment, but there are more professional ways of expressing it than smiling, laughing and attempting to crack jokes with a more stone-faced and context-sensitive Gabriel Paulista on the bench when his team were trailing Liverpool in the first half. Come to think of it, if Arsenal and Wenger can afford to buy most of the best forwards there are today, then Sanchez probably wouldn’t be featuring regularly as it would have been the case when a certain Luis Suarez arrived in Barca.

At Barca he was shifted out because the suits there and manager simply felt he wasn’t good enough. But now under the management of the avuncular Wenger at Arsenal, he’s become a god and holding the club to ransom with his petulance.

With Wenger under continuing scrutiny about whether he stays or goes at the expiry of his current contract at the end of this season.

Former Manchester United great Gary Neville could not have put it more correctly when he tweeted about the Sanchez problem: “Sanchez is a great player but he’s exploiting his manager’s current predicament.”

Source Daily Sports

Posted March 7, 2017

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