It has now been four days since the close of the transfer window. I had almost instantly written about the final collapse of the deal to bring Alexis Sanchez to us, and now I have recovered enough to assess the situation.
Considered a luxury player by some, I considered him a missing piece of the puzzle, someone who could do what we have been finding hard to do, convert chances.
It was clear Sanchez wanted to rejoin Pep Guardiola at City, and it was clear Pep wanted that too. The debacle as to why that didn’t happen has been reported to excess in the mainstream outlets but, what hasn’t been reported, is where do we go from here.
I believe the ball is certainly still in the Chileans court, and he has recently taken to Instagram to post some words, almost prophetic in nature. That is all well and good, but where does that leave us in our pursuit.
We essentially have three options, well four if you include forgetting about signing him. Clearly, that doesn’t seem to be in Guardiola’s vocabulary, and so, I will illustrate the three ways in which we can get the diminutive striker into our squad, and no, it doesn’t involve Raheem or Sergio leaving.
First, and most likely I would bet, we secure him for free at the end of the season. This is obviously the route which has been banded about in the media and seems good in theory. The question is, how badly does Alexis Sanchez want out? In January foreign clubs can come in for him, and maybe he will balance the option of leaving now against waiting another five months to reunite with Pep.
The second option is that we take him on a loan in January. While I am not sure how Arsene would respond to that request, I am sure that Sanchez would, or should at least, be available in City blue for the Champions League knock out stages, with Arsenals non-qualification not having him cup-tied. We could, of course, buy him in the January window, but I am also of a similar mind that Arsenal would not be responsive to the figure we would initially offer. It certainly wouldn’t be a 50-60 million bid.
With this option Pep would secure his target for half a season and we wouldn’t need to sell anyone because of our ‘Non-Home grown’ player quota, a maximum of 17, currently stands at 16. This, I believe, is why we also didn’t make bids for non-British defenders when it became clear Mangala wasn’t moving on.
So now to the third, most outrageous and probably would never happen possibility. Alexis Sanchez has less than a year remaining on his contract and could, in theory at least, buy himself out of it.
Of course, everything would have to go through his agent, Fernando Felicevich. Which, unless something has changed, could be an idea dead on arrival as reports as recent as July claim his agent wants Alexis to remain until the end of his contract. Allowing a more lucrative one in the summer of 2018.
So wages of 6.16 million, for those of you who are counting, is what Sanchez is due to earn if he stays until the end of the season. If he does buy himself out of his contract he will be able to move anywhere, even though the window has shut and, as I said earlier, we are below our ‘non-homegrown’ quota.
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The only obstacle in this would be even though he is now available to move for free, the player’s registration could be kept by Arsenal. Now, in this case, it usually goes to a tribunal, where they then set a price for the interested club to pay the selling club. These guys usually only rule on cases involving youth players and players under the age of 24. Remember it was the tribunal who set the fee Manchester City would receive for Daniel Sturridge when he moved to Chelsea in 2009. It would certainly not be a typical situation for either club to be in, but this whole transfer window has been anything but ordinary and, of course, we are City.