Sanchez can end Manchester United's wait for a new Rooney or Ronaldo
When the revolving door shuts, Henrikh Mkhitaryan may be locked outside Old Trafford and Alexis Sanchez safely contained within it. If so, Manchester United will have both traded flair players and traded up, an inconsistent performer replaced by a regular scorer.
If so, there are different ways of remembering Mkhitaryan’s time in Manchester: as the Bundesliga player of the year who spent large spells of his two campaigns omitted and on the sidelines and as the man who scored in the Europa League final.
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He was both fringe figure and pivotal performer at different times, marginalised and a main man. He registered five assists in August but has only ever scored five league goals for United. Yet, while Paul Pogba was named the best player in last season’s Europa League, the Armenian, who also struck in the quarter-final, last 16, last 32 and group stages, may not have been too far behind.
Should Sanchez sign, however, United ought to anticipate more goals and more consistency. His arrival has the potential to be transformative; perhaps in next season’s title race or their intra-city rivalry with the league leaders. But they must hope it will reverse another trend: at Old Trafford.
Because since Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Ji-sung Park arrived in consecutive summers between 2003 and 2005, United have not signed a single winger, attacking midfielder or No. 10 who deserves be deemed an unqualified success.
It marks them out from their peers, who tend to boast several such hits, and comes when that genre of player has defined an era. Until N’Golo Kante was crowned PFA Player of the Year in May, nine of the previous 11 winners were fell into the category of attacking midfielders, wingers or No. 10s: four (Ronaldo twice, Rooney and Ryan Giggs) were United players, but, tellingly, none since 2010.
Meanwhile, their rivals have benefited from the incision and invention, the ingenuity and creativity of unqualified successes of buys who operate in the roles supporting the striker in 4-2-3-1 or 3-4-2-1 formations. And, while all have others who have made a lesser impact, Tottenham have triumphs in the shape of Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen and before them Gareth Bale and Manchester City have brought in Kevin de Bruyne and David Silva, with Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling suggesting they will deserve to be bracketed alongside them.
Liverpool can cite Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah and, until recently, Philippe Coutinho. Chelsea boast Eden Hazard. Arsenal, until their relationship with Sanchez broke down, might have placed the Chilean firmly in that category, for his own contribution if not the team’s fortunes.
United may mention Pogba, but he is essentially a central midfielder who can operate further forward, rather than vice versa, just as Robin van Persie delivered a title as a centre forward. They have several wingers, No. 10s or attacking midfielders who should not be dismissed as disappointments, players who could be called qualified successes, delivering for at least some of their time at Old Trafford but without both reaching and maintaining the standards of Hazard and co: Anthony Martial, who may graduate to the category of the unqualified success, Juan Mata, Antonio Valencia, Nani and, arguably, Mkhitaryan.
They have two, in Valencia and Ashley Young, who have been reinvented in other positions. They have an eclectic assortment of failures – Angel Di Maria, Memphis Depay, Zoran Tosic, Gabriel Obertan, Bebe and Wilfried Zaha, though the last is entitled to contend he was never even granted the chance to fail.
This view is that Nani came closest to being deemed a genuine success; had he not overstayed his welcome, he may have been remembered more fondly. As it is, the Portuguese reached double figures for goals in successive seasons and ranked among the finest players in England in 2010-11, yet ended the campaign benched for the Champions League final.
So, arguably, no defining flair player has been signed since Rooney, now 32, joined as a teenager. Park followed 12 months later, though he, like Valencia, was more physical force than technical talent, a selfless runner whose key attribute was not his skill, and that work ethic allowed him to dovetail with Ronaldo. It was a time, too, when United still had Giggs and Paul Scholes, though the latter was being reinvented in a deeper role.
But Scholes retired for the second time in 2013, Giggs for the first in 2014. Ronaldo left in 2009. Rooney’s decline could date back to 2010 or 2012. And so, although Van Persie staved it off for one season, does United’s. There are other reasons, David Moyes and Louis van Gaal foremost among them, but that inability to find a defining flair player helps explain a comparative barrenness.
They scored 64, 62, 49 and 54 league goals in four seasons from 2013 to 2017. Their total of 229 in that time compares miserably with Arsenal’s 281, Chelsea’s 288, Liverpool’s 294 and City’s 336 goals. They have become more prolific so far this season, aided recently by the homegrown Jesse Lingard, but bringing in Sanchez should make them more potent again. And perhaps, at long last, United will re-enter the era of the attacking midfielder, the winger and the No. 10 by buying one who, by any criteria, is a complete success.
