Remember when Francis Coquelin disputed the claims that Alexis Sanchez was annoying his colleagues and they wanted him to go? Well, more details have emerged.
Coquelin said the following about claims that Sanchez was a frustrating figure in the dressing room: “Well, you know Alexis Sanchez, he’s quality on the pitch, he’s someone who can produce something magical, he’s a top player.” he said via BBC Sport.
“I hear of things that the dressing room wasn’t getting on well with him, well I don’t really know where that came from.
“Sometimes that’s what people say when we’ve got a great player we talk about ego, but you know he’s someone who is always keen to work and I didn’t have any problem with him and the squad don’t have a problem.”
Months later, Football writer Raphael Honigstein has dropped an interesting piece of insight behind Sanchez’s time at Arsenal, in particular how teammates became frustrated because he ‘played up to the camera.’
Honigstein said the following on the TotallyFootballShow podcast earlier:
“It has become a bit of a joke to laugh at Arsenal because they made the noise ‘finally we got rid of Alexis Sanchez’ It’s been under-reported just how badly the whole Arsenal dressing room hated Alexis Sanchez. They really felt that he was just playing up to the camera doing all these things like ‘Oh I’m trying but nobody else is! What am I doing here?
Arsenal would put up stats inside the dressing room last year after every game showing the amount of kilometres run, the passing, and Sanchez would regularly come out with the lowest mileage run of any player in the team by a big distance. The players would just go absolutely bananas at him playing to the camera and making all these moves like ‘Oh, they’re just not worthy of me! What am I doing here?”
It’s certainly interesting to hear another perspective of the dressing room and squad harmony when Sanchez was at the Emirates.
Do you think he will cause unrest at Manchester United in the coming months? Or will Jose Mourinho be the right man to get the best out of Sanchez?
SportBible.com
