January Transfer Window 2017/18

If we were playing Arsenal tomorrow (forgetting this transfer saga), Sanchez is the only player I'd be concerned about. Even at his worst he's their main threat. He won't be the last player to get sick of his current club and want to leave.

Not sure if anyone else heard Darren Fletcher and Jermaine Jenas on Radio 5 Live, actually talking sense. The people claiming Sanchez is the biggest mercenary in football and acting like he's going to some random club in China need to take a step back and think about what they're saying.
 
BaZ87 said:
I'd rather go to China than Utd.

And you have to remember, this is the internet and we only deal in extremes and the fact that this is such a high profile deal only makes that worse. Are Utd spending crazy money to get Sanchez? Yes but this isn't the first or last time we'll see a club spend way ott to sign a player. Has money proved to be the pivotal factor in Sanchez's decision? Most likely but again, he's not the first or the last.

And Jenas talks ****, it's not the first or last time he will either.
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Sure :p

And yes I'm not saying Jenas is spot on but he's far from the worst pundit, and what he was saying in this case was fair. The article Neil Ashton wrote (who I know is a waste of space) was ridiculous.

Van Dijk was hardly a model pro, yet people aren't expecting him to make waves at Liverpool, because he probably won't. The same way Sanchez won't cause trouble at Man Utd. You can see why he's sick of Arsenal, the Arsenal fans are all sick of their own club too.

People actually involved in football (even at rivals) seem much less bothered about this than the rival fans. I suppose that's not a surprise.
 
Craig Norwood‏ @CraigNorwood
Alexis Sánchez transfer to Manchester United edging ever closer. Club hopeful to pencil in medical at Carrington in the next 48-hours.
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Closest thing to an official announcement as you'll get.
 
It will be very interesting to see how Aubameyang does, I rate him but he's the sort of player I could see struggling, not exactly sure why.
 
I think all this Pep stuff has been primarily peddled by the media. I'm sure Pep wanted to sign him and Sanchez wanted to go to Man City as an upgrade on Arsenal, but their time at Barca was nothing like it's made out to be.

I suspect he'll have a more free role up top for us, it's a waste of money having him defending all the time. If he can play No.10 properly, he'll slot in there perfectly.
 
Sanchez is undergoing his medical tonight, presentation likely tomorrow.

Edit: medical might actually be tomorrow now too.
 
BaZ87 said:
From a technical point of view I suspect they'll be individual deals with the fees being identical. I'm not sure this deal is bigger than when Liverpool swapped Josemi for Kromkamp though.
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You could be right but Ornstein said no money involved (fat chance with Raiola though, let's be honest).
 
BaZ87 said:
No cash has to change hands, between the clubs at least but from an accounting point of view I'm sure it will be recorded as two separate deals and some sort of value will have been placed on both deals. Mikhi is worth approx £21m on Utd's books - it wouldn't surprise me if officially speaking Utd sold him to Arsenal for £21m and bought Sanchez for £21m so that Utd don't record a big loss on his transfer in this set of accounts and instead just carry on writing that £21m down over another 5 years or however long Sanchez's contract is.
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I suppose the point here is that it's a swap in terms of cost. So instead of Mkhitaryan plus cash, Woodward has managed to get Sanchez for the same price (in effect). Not a bad deal at all for us. Mkhitaryan has basically done nothing all season, sadly. Mourinho is partly to blame, his handling of him from the day he joined has been bizarre.
 
We had to structure the deal this way in order to get him now, signing him in the summer would be more difficult.

For me it doesn't matter, we are always going to have to pay top whack because people know we can, and for the very best players the other huge teams will be interested, pushing the price up further. Comparative to our revenue, our wage bill is the lowest in the league I believe (I'm no expert but I've seen this mentioned many times). That should put in perspective the kind of spending power we have available.

As ever, if he has two amazing seasons and makes the difference for us, nobody will care about the cost. This is just something for people to focus on to try and take the shine off the fact we're signing one of the best attackers around (this was my opinion before we were even linked to him). The main culprits are certain sections of the press who have clearly been briefed to try and stir up trouble. Of course City/Chelsea/Arsenal will want people to think he's on crazy money and that's all he wanted.

A lot of money has been sucked out of our club for non-football reasons, I'd rather the riches were splashed on world class players even if it doesn't represent the best value - nothing in football is about value these days.

Anyway, medical this afternoon!
 
BaZ87 said:
If you sign him to play on the right that only makes the deal weirder to me. Sanchez wants to play centrally - playing from the left is a compromise but being a right footer coming inside is a lot easier than from the right.
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I'm hoping we'll play as follows:

-----------Lukaku
Martial - Sanchez - Lingard (on current form?)
------- Pogba - Matic

Martial simply has to be included somewhere. Jose seems to like him now so I think he will be.

BaZ87 said:
That's true. You've decided that you have to blow everybody out of the water to make sure you get the deal done. It's no different to when Newcastle spent £17m to sign Owen from Real - they knew they had to offer well in excess of what Liverpool were offering to make it impossible for any other outcome.
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It's as much about timing as anything. Come the summer you could have Real Madrid, Barca and Man City all interested for less money (but still a lot) and then us getting him is far from certain.
 
Moses said:
Isn't that where Pogba struggled, at least relatively speaking? Don't you get the best out of him if he's played further forward with two midfielders backing him up?
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He's thought to be best on the left of a midfield 3, but he seems to be OK at the moment. It can only work with Matic though as he shields the defence.

We could just play a midfield 3 and have Martial - Lukaku - Sanchez, assuming Sanchez is OK on the right. Statistically he's as good on the right as the left, just been looking at a stats breakdown.

BaZ87 said:
Anyway, I'm bored now. If you want to believe that Sanchez has performed a massive U turn on the City move based on Utd offering him £200k per week then fair enough. Obviously City were only offering him £4.50 and a pack of wine gums.
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Thank god it wasn't Jelly Tots or we'd have lost out.
 
Egon said:
If Arsenal were to lose Sanchez and Walcott and bring in Mkhi and Aubameyang with a net outlay of approx £0m... (big if on the last one, but seems to be gaining momentum) surely that's got to be seen as good business by the gunners and the fans should be pretty pleased with the outcome?

If they miss out on Auba, then it's a different story!
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Aubameyang will cost around £60m? Mkhitaryan has cost effectively nothing (though you can bet there will be some agent fees there).
 
(Believed to be) Genuine pic of Sanchez in the kit:

mBjPUI5l.jpg


All set for an announcement presumably tomorrow.
 
As above, the club's official line is that he's being paid the same as Zlatan (now joint highest paid player). Makes sense really, they are on a top tier wage, much more than most clubs could offer.
 
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