Arsenal will lose yet again if Alexis Sanchez fades away

• e-mail

Alexis Sanchez sat on the bench, his blue shirt pulled up, hiding his face, engulfing his head. This could well be his last season at Arsenal. If so, it is already beginning to follow a familiar pattern.

‘It’s better to burn out, than to fade away,’ sang Neil Young, but that’s not how they do things at Arsenal. Few of the greats enjoy blazing last hurrahs. Most leave, not to cheers, but muted applause at the end of long and exhausting transfer sagas.

Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, Cesc Fabregas, all had forgettable final seasons. Henry was injured, Vieira could not hope to match the Invincible campaign, Fabregas was a shadow of his previous self. Already a sense of foreboding tracks Sanchez.

Alexis Sanchez made his return to action for Arsenal against Liverpool on Sunday afternoon

Absent for the first two games, he was started at Liverpool in what turned out to be one of the poorest performances under Arsene Wenger. Much of the summer it was thought he would be sold. Now, just as likely is an equally standard Arsenal finale, the slow retreat into irrelevance.

Sanchez’s contract is up at the end of the season. At what point does the need to protect his lucrative free transfer outweigh his motivation to serve Arsenal, certainly if there is little to play for?

Time is allowed to drag at Arsenal; everything becomes a soap. We now know the manager was always going to stay and the club always wanted him. Yet somehow the tale of Wenger’s new contract was allowed to overshadow the second half of last season.

It is the same with player departures. Endless debilitating rounds of will-he, won’t-he. Robin van Persie seemed the only one unaffected by it, scoring 37 goals in 48 games in his final season. Others have had the energy slowly sucked from them by the uncertainty.

There is already a sense of foreboding as Sanchez enters the last season of his Arsenal deal

It was hard to judge Sanchez on Sunday, given that it was his first match of the season, he was withdrawn early, and got such poor service in the time he was on the pitch — but already there are worrying signs.

We have been here before. By the start of 2010-11, Barcelona had already made clear an intention to retrieve Fabregas and it was common knowledge the player wanted to go. Instead, he stayed for a last, insipid campaign. Fabregas scored 15 league goals in 2009-10. In his last year, he scored three.

Arsenal slipped to fourth place, were eliminated from the FA Cup at the quarter-final stage and Fabregas’s mistake gifted Barcelona a goal as Arsenal exited the Champions League in the last 16. He returned to Nou Camp in 2011 and, when he came back to England in 2014, Arsenal did not even challenge Chelsea for his services.

Henry was another who departed in underwhelming circumstances. David Dein, Arsenal’s former vice-chairman, confirmed two bids of £50million were turned down before Henry signed his contract in 2006. Had Arsenal accepted either offer, he would have been the most expensive player in the world. Instead, a whimper of a campaign unfolded, Henry playing what proved to be his last game for Arsenal on March 7, 2007, against PSV Eindhoven.

Thierry Henry spent the last months of his first Arsenal spell on the sidelines with injury

Groin and stomach injuries kept him out of the rest of the season and he was sold to Barcelona for half the money rejected 12 months earlier.

Even Vieira’s last season was a disappointment. True, it ended with him scoring the winning penalty in an FA Cup final shoot-out with Manchester United, but considering the previous season had seen Arsenal go unbeaten — the first club to do so since Victorian times — 2004-05 was not considered a vintage year at the time.

Nor were Vieira’s performances compared favourably to his best, and after several years of speculation involving Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus, he was allowed to join the Serie A club for £13.75m. Arsenal had his best years, but have never replaced him.

Of all the great players lost since the Invincible season, it is Vieira whose absence is felt the hardest.

The drift now continues with Sanchez. There is talk of a late offer from Manchester City, but, either way, Arsenal seem set to lose. If they sell, they are deprived of a stellar talent with no time to bring in a replacement. They get the money, but little else.

If they keep Sanchez, but with his contract winding down, can he be relied upon in a team so short of inspiration? Who, among his team-mates on Sunday, could rally a player seeing out his time?

There are few leaders at Arsenal, few who will provide the example or stimulus Sanchez needs to make his last season memorable. At Anfield, as he disappeared into an incongruously coloured shirt, he seemed a perfect metaphor for Arsenal’s malaise. Not burning out, just fading away; out of the blue, into the black.

Even Patrick Vieira would have viewed the end of his time at Arsenal as a disappointment

When all else fails, blame the stewards 

Well, we all knew who would get the blame eventually. Not the fans, even though they spilled towards the pitch; and not the players, because how can they possibly be expected to control their emotions when something as rare and unexpected as a goal happens. It’s not as if they train for precisely that event every day of their professional lives.

No, it’s the stewards’ fault that Raheem Sterling got his second yellow card at Bournemouth on Saturday. It was the stewards who were intimidating and out of control; the stewards whose behaviour requires sanction. Manchester City’s players, meanwhile, apparently love nothing more than meeting their public.

Makes you wonder why there has to be such a cordon of hi-viz heavies present each time the team bus pulls up at a stadium. Maybe, in future, the stewards should just leave them all to one giant meet and greet. The rest of us can pull up a deckchair, get some popcorn in, and enjoy the fun.

Stewards have taken the blame for the scenes involving Manchester City at Bournemouth

Admit it Pep, that was tough 

Pep Guardiola sounded a little tetchy after Manchester City secured an added-time win at Bournemouth. Asked if such a narrow escape was evidence that the Premier League was the hardest in Europe, he bristled.

‘I know you like to hear “it is the toughest one, congratulations”, but I would not say going to the Bernabeu, Camp Nou, Bilbao, Sevilla is easy,’ he said. Guardiola added that when English clubs do as well as Spain’s in Europe, then the Premier League can claim to be the toughest.

Yet he wasn’t being asked to compare European performance. He was asked to evaluate a visit to Bournemouth, and came up with opponents such as Sevilla and Athletic Bilbao.

Plainly, Bournemouth are not Sevilla or Bilbao. Sevilla have won the Europa League in five of the last 12 seasons, Bilbao were finalists in 2012 and have won the league eight times and the Copa Del Rey 23 times.

Bournemouth have never played in Europe, never finished higher than 10th, and reached the quarter-finals of the FA Cup once, in 1957.

Here’s a little more perspective. When Kevin De Bruyne signed for Manchester City on August 30, 2015, his fee was over £20million more than Bournemouth had spent on players — ever. So Bournemouth giving City a game until the 96th minute two years later is evidence that, yes, the Premier League does have claims to be the toughest — if not the best — in Europe.

Pep Guardiola was tetchy when asked about the relative difficulty of the Premier League

And here’s more. The club Guardiola managed in Spain was Barcelona. And he said playing Sevilla and Bilbao was hard. And no doubt it was. But not that hard.

In the last 10 completed seasons Barcelona have played Sevilla 31 times. Sevilla have won just three of those games, and only one in La Liga. The other two wins were a Copa Del Rey second leg, and the first leg of the Spanish Super Cup in 2010 — which Barcelona won 5-3 on aggregate anyway, because they took the second leg 4-0.

And Bilbao? Played 33 Won 24 Drawn 7 Lost 2 for Barcelona — and neither of those defeats took place in La Liga. The last time Bilbao won a league game between the clubs was on May 20, 2006 — the final match of the season with Barcelona having already won the league by a minimum of 12 points. The last time Bilbao beat Barcelona in a league game that mattered was on November 24, 2001.

So while the quality of La Liga is unquestionable, the challenge is largely contained within the elite. That’s why it’s tougher here, even if Bournemouth may never win the Champions League. 

Khan wants football to cop the bill 

Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, wrote to Richard Scudamore this month insisting Premier League clubs should pay more towards their police bill.

Khan said policing football costs the Metropolitan Police close to £7m each year, but clubs contributed less than £350,000.

Scudamore’s attitude is that fans are members of the public and have the same right as any citizen to feel safe and protected going about their daily activities. Tourist attractions, entertainment venues and city centres at night are also expensively policed, and nobody expects The Red Lion or the local multiplex to pick up the tab.

These businesses support the police through their taxes — as do football clubs. It is the same at the Notting Hill Carnival — a very lucrative event for some. Interestingly, though, there has been no mention from Khan of where he wants to send the £8m police bill for that — a sum that in two days outstrips the cost of football in the capital for a whole year. 

Frank De Boer is on the brink at Crystal Palace where the fixtures, as much as the league table, may offer a clue. After the next two Premier League matches against Burnley and Southampton, comes a run from hell. Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea: arguably the three best teams in the country.

If Palace boss De Boer doesn’t turn it around soon, there could be real trouble by mid-October. To act now would be horribly early, but Palace will also have an eye on giving any successor a chance. It’s a very real dilemma.

Crystal Palace already have a dilemma on their hands surrounding the future of Frank de Boer

Federer's fit to be champ 

No doubt whoever wins the US Open faces having his achievement belittled. Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka, Milos Raonic, Kei Nishikori and Novak Djokovic are all missing, injured. Yet there is a reason marathon runners cannot stop the clock to catch their breath at the halfway stage. 

It is an endurance test — as is Grand Slam tennis. So part of the challenge is staying fit, all the way through. If Roger Federer wins he will have done that, for the 20th time, at the age of 36. No asterisk required.

Bilic in crisis talks - or is it just another act? 

West Ham’s board do not like to sack managers. Strangely, though, they are happy to give the impression that they do.

Even before Saturday’s 3-0 defeat at Newcastle, there was unchecked speculation over the future of Slaven Bilic, and that has only intensified in the wake of a result that leaves the club bottom going into the international break.

Bilic flew to Marbella on Monday, to meet his employers and discuss the way forward. The word is that he will be given more time — yet somehow all of this detail, the doubts, the talks, the fragile way ahead, leaks out.

It is the same every season. Yet co-owners David Sullivan and David Gold are far from impulsive. They saw the club go down rather than make an early call on Avram Grant when they could have brought in Sam Allardyce before the January transfer window that year. Then, prior to Bilic, Allardyce’s contract was simply allowed to run out. Unless complete disaster is looming — and, remember, West Ham haven’t played a home game yet and are bedding in a number of new signings — it is probable the same will happen to Bilic.

Slaven Bilic has had a tough start to the season, including a 3-0 defeat by Newcastle United

Rafa Benitez’s name is mentioned, and he was clearly the prime target when Allardyce left, but the numbers would be huge. As well as Bilic’s compensation, and Benitez’s contract, there is the small matter of £6m compensation to Newcastle. Ball park? Around £25m. No doubt that is one of the reasons for boardroom patience.

So, if the options are prohibitively expensive, why allow this uncertainty? It cannot be helpful to a dressing room already short of confidence.

It cannot aid a manager still trying to recruit players, or impress his authority on an ill-disciplined team. It is almost as if the board want to appease the fans — to be seen to do something, to show they care.

Still, at least this run has put to bed the nonsense that West Ham’s form last season was the fault of the Olympic Stadium. It turns out the players do not like any stadium, not just their own. Maybe they could play on gravel.