Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer addressed the media today ahead of United’s first away game of the Premier League season at Wolverhampton Wanderers on Monday night. The most newsworthy portion of the session was when OGS gave an update on the Alexis Sanchez situation.
The Chilean, arguably the worst signing in the club’s modern history, has been strongly linked with a move to Serie A this week. Reportedly, the forward has been drawing interest from AC Milan, AS Roma, Napoli and Juventus. However, his egregiously colossal salary has proven to be a sticking point to getting a transfer deal done.
Sanchez suffered a hamstring injury while on international duty with Chile this summer, and thus isn’t fully acclimated and up to speed with the result of the club.
This situation has inspired a lot of transfer talk, but Solskjaer disputes the idea of the former Arsenal man leaving before the transfer deadline closes in other countries. The Norwegian doesn’t just expect him Sanchez to stay, the manager believes that the player will be a big contributor this season.
“Alexis is such a professional. He comes in working every single day, really hard,” Sanchez said.
“He wants to be part of this. These stories that he’s been put in the reserves – of course he hasn’t. He’s part of our squad and he’s a very good player.”
“He’s a few weeks behind the rest but he’s very close to being part of it.”
“We don’t have the biggest forward line so Alexis might end up playing a lot more games than you expect. We expect him to come good at this club. He’s quality.”
Alexis has just five goals and only nine assists in his 45 appearances for United since moving over in a swap deal with Arsenal for Henrikh Mkhitaryan in January of 2018.
Last season saw him score only one goal and make just three assists in Premier League play, where his playing time was under 900 minutes in total for the entire competition. Solskjaer also pointed out during the press conference that United don’t have a very large contingent of forwards- no doubt a nod to the fact that the club sold Romelu Lukaku and didn’t replace him.
In other words, United are really going to need Alexis to find again the form he had before moving to Old Trafford.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
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