Manchester City can have no complaints over Alexis Sanchez, they should have done their business sooner... and the Chilean has given them the runaround before

  • Manchester City missed out on the signing of primary target Alexis Sanchez
  • City bought Sergio Aguero in 2011 because Sanchez did not want to join
  • The failure to sign Sanchez again could be a renaissance moment for Aguero 

It's a little-known fact that Manchester City only bought Sergio Aguero because Alexis Sanchez did not want to join them.

It was the summer of 2011 and Sanchez was giving City the run-around. At the time, the club had started securing marquee names — Carlos Tevez, Yaya Toure and David Silva — to make a statement of intent and accelerate their development, but the Chilean had eyes only for Barcelona.

His representatives had fluttered their eyelashes at City while they needed negotiating options but then the mood changed and phone calls were suddenly not returned. There were unconvincing explanations for this — 'Sorry, mobile on the blink.'

Manchester City missed out on the deadline day signing of primary target Alexis Sanchez

Manchester City missed out on the deadline day signing of primary target Alexis Sanchez

Aguero was a 23-year-old keen to leave Atletico Madrid and his agent happened to be with City's player acquisition staff at the M56 Marriott Hotel near Manchester, as the Sanchez trail went cold.


Juventus wanted Aguero, too, so City pounced, closing the deal immediately and telling their senior man in Spain to quit trying to call the Sanchez camp. The rest, as they say, is history.

The point of this story is that City did their talking early and had back-up options in that distant summer — and have generally made it an article of faith to avoid the madness of deadline day. 

They always needed to build in plenty of time, in the days when attracting players to the club proved such a hard sell.

Few present in the summer of 2009 forgot the reply a senior City executive got when he knocked on the door of agent Dimitri Seluk's hotel room in Rome to discuss the idea of buying his client, Yaya Toure. 

'Manchester City?' Seluk scoffed. 'Why should he leave Barcelona for you?'

It’s a little known fact that City bought Sergio Aguero because Sanchez did not want to join

It's a little known fact that City bought Sergio Aguero because Sanchez did not want to join

Their director-of-football model, set up by former chief executive Garry Cook, made City organised in a way that Manchester United, heavily reliant on agents Jorge Mendes and Mino Raiola, have simply not been.

The man with that title at the Etihad — Txiki Begiristain — traditionally starts his holiday on September 1 and when it's over he dedicates his every working hour to targets, analysing the requirement, identifying three or four names for each in priority order, then going about securing them.

The majority of City's work this summer bears out their philosophy. They had secured three full backs and tied up the deal for Bernardo Silva before the season began in a way which exemplified the club's excellence in this field of the football business.

But where Sanchez was concerned the usual process did not apply. They did not lodge a bid for him until Tuesday night, despite declaring their interest to Arsenal in May and repeating it several times over. 

City's failure to get their business done promptly meant they were burned over Sanchez

City's failure to get their business done promptly meant they were burned over Sanchez

That created a mere 48-hour window to conclude a Sanchez deal and hope for the corresponding one which would allow Arsenal to find a replacement. 

City are indignant about Arsenal's failure to make the necessary preparations to bring Thomas Lemar as a replacement, even the basic due diligence. But how another club goes about its business is, frankly, no business of City's — feckless as Arsenal do seem.

City do not know if Arsenal's failure to entice the Frenchman is simply a consequence of the player's disinclination to leave. Arsenal's apparent disorganisation might actually stem from their own reluctance to let go of their proven game-changer.

The inner workings of a selling club can never be within a buyer's control, so City can have no complaints.

Arsenal's fecklessness could help Aguero, who remains a leading attacker for this City team

Arsenal's fecklessness could help Aguero, who remains a leading attacker for this City team

'If you try to trade in the last day you can hardly call it business,' says one executive familiar with the Premier League market. 'It's a Wild West saloon at that stage. Things might come off, they might not, but you can't walk into the room with any expectation.'

Of course, by the law of unintended consequences, the deadline-day mess might actually be a renaissance moment for Aguero and that would be welcome.

The Argentine is a player of loyalty and significant ability who committed himself to Manchester City when Sanchez had other fish to fry.

The comments below have not been moderated.

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

We are no longer accepting comments on this article.