Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer seems determined to get rid of Alexis Sanchez before the summer transfer window in most of Europe closes but the player is refusing to leave the club. United signed the Chilean from Arsenal in January 2018 with Henrikh Mkhitaryan heading in the other direction.
Italian club, Roma has shown some interest in the 30-year-old this summer but they have an alternative target in Chelsea’s Michy Batshuayi, who will be on a more affordable wage structure with Sanchez reportedly on £505,000 each week. It would seem that when Manchester City dropped their interest in the player, that did it for the right reasons.
This summer, Solskjaer allowed striker Romelu Lukaku to leave the club, signing for Inter Milan a week ago after a summer of speculation which saw the Belgian linked to Inter, then to Juventus with the prospect of Paulo Dybala coming in the other direction, that interest being scuppered by United and Inter coming back in for Lukaku.
United have just Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford as the clubs experienced strikers this season with rookie Mason Greenwood coming through the academy and expected to play a big part during the course of the season. Solskjaer could also call on Tahith Chong to bolster his front line, either offloading Sanchez of removing him from the first team.
It has been reported that Solskjaer will dump Sanchez in the reserves, where he might not even feature at all if he does not agree to leave the club this summer. With the transfer window in most of Europe closing in the 2 September, there is still time to get something sorted. If this is true, it seems clear that the Chilean has no future at the club.
It is a shame that this did not work out for Sanchez as whilst he was at Arsenal during the 2017/18 season, he was in much better form than he has been in at United. It seems the player is happy to continue taking the money, not respecting the club, the shirt, his teammates or the clubs supporters. Solskjaer needs to be given a guarantee that he wins here.
Since signing for the club, Sanchez has reportedly banked £41 million in wages, earning around £8.2 million for each goal he has scored for the club. Ed Woodward certainly has something to do with allowing this grotesque wage to be given to a player who has underachieved massively since has arrived, playing the piano in his announcement video.
Former United striker, Robin van Persie, who retired this summer, has offered some advice to the former Arsenal forward, suggested he needed to rediscover how it felt when he arrived at the Old Trafford club 19 months ago. Speaking to Goal.com, Van Persie gave Sanchez the advice, that he should take if he is going to remain at the club, saying:
“He is still a wonderful player, still a great player. He needs to find a way to be happy again. If you are happy, you want to create and have fun. He had that in his first couple of months from what I saw and he needs to find that again.
“He can still play, he is still a fantastic football player. He just doesn’t really look happy and the reason why this is… I don’t know. I can only guess, but from distance, he looks unhappy and he needs to find a way to be happy again.”
However, Solskjaer seems to have his mind made up about the Chilean and wants him far away from his squad this season. After their 4-0 victory over Chelsea on Sunday and tasked with a visit to the Molineux on Monday evening, where they lost twice in around a fortnight last season, they seem to be doing alright without Sanchez. Whether Solskjaer needs to draft him in remains to be seen.
