Jose Mourinho just accomplished an epic troll job on Arsenal, referring to the star player he just acquired from the Gunners as coming over on the “cheap.” Once again Mourinho gloated over an instance in which he bested his arch-nemesis Arsene Wenger, this time not on the pitch, but in the transfer market.
Alexis Sanchez made his debut against Yeovil Town in the FA Cup fourth round, earning a starting position and man of the match honors. He’ll be paid £500,000 a week at Manchester United, who also paid him a big signing bonus and had to fork out a hefty agent fee. Mourinho still lauded the cut rate deal he said he got for the Chilean.
“He was cheap, wasn’t he?” Mourinho said after Sanchez played 72 minutes and helped United to the fifth round of the tournament.
“Free transfer, he was free. So for that price, it’s fantastic. I think everybody thinks the same in this country, I think everybody has to agree he is a fantastic player and the team that bought him has a plus.”
“We have a good group of attacking players, you could see today we played with three of them and Lingard was on the bench, Lukaku was on the bench, Zlatan at home, Martial at home.”
“So we have a good group and his quality is a plus and his experience is another plus.”
In other Mourinho and Sanchez news, the Portugese spoke out about the claim that his new forward allegedly missed his drug test at Arsenal on the day he left to complete his United transfer.
“I think Arsenal was very honest in the way they approached the situation,” said the United manager, who turned 55 on the same day as the FA Cup win.
“We all know you must tell the whereabouts of our players, where they are, 24 hours a day.”
“But I think everybody understands that nobody knew where he was going to be, where he was going to train, where he was going to sleep, was just a period of transfer. So I think it is easily understandable that it was no one’s mistake and consequence of the moment.”
There has been no implication of any wrongdoing by the Chilean, or either club. Wenger elaborated:
“I’m quite relaxed because we have nothing to hide here, we always try our best to cooperate with doping control. I pushed always for football to do more against doping so I don’t see why we shouldn’t cooperate. We try our best but this was a special day.”
“The most important is that the intention is right. The intention of Alexis was certainly not to hide – nor was our intention to hide anything. We have nothing to hide.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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