Where a quintet of protesters in Chile failed, Arsene Wenger might just have succeeded.
If there is a way to end Alexis Sanchez’s time at Arsenal, five pairs of feet marching in Santiago was never likely to be it. Such amateurism, of course, could not be tolerated by a perfectionist like Wenger who executed a plan that could prove much more effective – he made Sanchez sit and watch Arsenal.
For 45 minutes, Sanchez discovered what it is to be an Arsenal fan and although he never produced a protest banner of his own, the look on his face said more than a daubing on a bed sheet ever could.
In the time that the attacker was sat on the bench, Arsenal offered a vision of what life will be like if, as seems increasingly plausible, they have to do without him and it made for particularly grim viewing. There are numerous reasons for Arsenal to want to keep Sanchez but reasons for him to want to stay are becoming thinner on the ground.
Being left out of the starting line-up for a game that Arsenal could not afford to lose but did will do little to convince Sanchez to stay. Nor will his team slipping out of the top four for the first time since September, raising the prospect that this could turn out to be the year when Arsenal finally lose their place in the Champions League. But what will surely focus Sanchez’s mind more than anything else was a first half display of such meekness that it was hard to recall an occasion when Arsenal had a meaningful touch in the opposition penalty area.
Liverpool, a club who would be more than willing to offer Sanchez a guaranteed starting role in the highly unlikely event that he was willing to trade one pretender for another, were buoyed by his absence in a way that any team would be.
Having omitted the Chilean from his side, Wenger had to win but the days of Wenger winning the games that he has to now seem to belong to another time. By the interval another big game was on the verge of being lost. All Wenger could do was swallow his pride and send for his dispensable best player.
R.I.P. Arsenal’s season. pic.twitter.com/WHjtC17jII
— JOE.co.uk (@JOE_co_uk) March 4, 2017
That Arsenal improved after Sanchez’s introduction was inevitable. It wasn’t just the narrative that demanded it, so too did the prevailing, longstanding logic of football which has consistently taught us that outstandingly talented, hardworking footballers are always more likely to make teams better.
Wenger, though, seems increasingly prone to subscribing to the kind of logic which makes sense only to himself. That Arsenal got better after Sanchez’s arrival was not down to the player himself, he argued, it was a result of midfield domination.
Not surprisingly, Jurgen Klopp took another view. “Alexis Sanchez is a world class player,” the Liverpool manager said. “It took five minutes to adapt to the situation but it felt like fifty.”
The difference that the substitute made was there for all to see. Stretching the Liverpool defence with pace and movement, he created space for himself and for others. In doing so, he made a midfield that had laboured more effective and gave penetration to an attack that had been totally blunt.
Not only was Sanchez making sense of the Arsenal team, he was removing any lingering semblance of sense from his manager’s decision to start without him. Afterwards, Wenger attempted to explain that choice but again his logic was of the irrefutable kind. It did not change anyone’s mind that he had made a catastrophic selection error but it did allow Wenger to justify the decision to himself.
Take cover Arsene. #LIVARS pic.twitter.com/vcBIQVTgTo
— JOE (@JOE_co_uk) March 4, 2017
“The thinking was that we had to go more direct and I wanted to play two players who were strong in the air and after that to bring Alexis Sanchez on in the second half,” he said.
It should be stressed that this was not revisionism. Wenger had told of his plan to go direct beforehand but even before the strategy had gone wrong it seemed inevitable that it would do so. Having seen Jamie Vardy, the Aldi Sanchez, run amok in between and behind Liverpool’s defence just five days earlier, it beggared belief that the authentic Sanchez was not given the opportunity to do the same.
“I don’t deny that Alexis Sanchez is a great player,” Wenger added. “I signed him. It’s not a decision that was easy to make.” But make it he did and what followed was all too predictable.
That Liverpool’s opening goal came from the kind of direct route that Wenger had expected his own team to flourish from only added to the sense that his beliefs are now more likely to cost the Frenchman than favour him. Not that he sees things that way. It was, Wenger contended, “a lack of competition” caused by recent inactivity which had most undermined Arsenal. Yet the weaknesses which caused their latest loss at the home of a major rival were too similar to the ones that cost them whatever the demands of the fixture calendar for that explanation to carry too much weight.
Klopp was totally right to point out that Liverpool had been “spot on from the first second” but Arsenal were guilty of allowing their opponents the opportunity to establish into a tempo that suited them.
It would be stretching things to suggest that Liverpool were there for the taking – they rarely are against any of the better Premier League teams – but the opportunity existed for Arsenal to add to the doubts in their minds that will have existed since Leicester City pummelled them. As it was, Arsenal were insipid and they were non-committal and the 2-0 advantage that Liverpool had established by half-time was the least that they deserved.
Olivier Giroud struck the crossbar via a wonderful reflex save from Simon Mignolet shortly after Sanchez had come on and Danny Welbeck then scored to bring Arsenal back into the game. But even with their lead coming under threat, the control that the goals of Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane had afforded Liverpool meant they could absorb pressure and look to hit Arsenal on the break. In other words, they were playing the game in the way that it suits them most.
All that was standing in their way of a crucial victory was the possibility that Sanchez might shape the narrative to suit himself but that passed in the 90th minute when his shot was blocked by Joel Matip and from the resultant break Georginio Wijnaldum guaranteed the result that had seemed inevitable from the moment that Wenger had named his team. Shortly after, the final whistle blew and Sanchez was the first Arsenal player to make it to the tunnel. He had seen enough of his team mates during the first half to want to spend any more time with them than necessary and the fear for Arsenal must be that that does not only apply to tonight.
