Two years ago this month it was dawning on Manchester United supporters that the club have signed a dud in Alexis Sanchez.
The Chilean had failed to hit the ground running at United and in early March 2018, United’s season began to collapse.
Already out of the title race, Sevilla stunned Jose Mourinho’s side in a miserable Champions League last 16 tie.
Sanchez was especially poor and The Telegraph‘s headline read: “Manchester United fans must hope Alexis Sanchez has at least hit rock bottom and cannot slip any further.”
Oh if only they knew at the time how much worse it would get…
Mediocre at best
To Sanchez’s credit he responded with a couple of important performances.
He helped inspire United to a famous comeback win at The Etihad, and scored in a FA Cup semi-final victory over Tottenham.
Those two displays allowed us to kid ourselves into believing Sanchez was set to come good.
The problem was the 2018/19 season saw Sanchez get a lot worse.
He was a player you would watch and feel sorry for. Here was a world class player who had lost his superpowers and was suddenly at a loss of how to recover them. It was painful to see.
A year later he put in another totally abject performance in United’s home defeat to PSG, and he was not involved in the away leg turnaround win.
By the end of last season Sanchez had been established as one of the worst signings in United’s history, based on the expectations and expense in terms of his wages.
Moving forward
United have at least moved on from Sanchez, as best we can, and loaned him out for the season.
He will likely never play for the club again and efforts will be made in the summer to find him a new team, permanently if possible.
The best development to come from the Sanchez deal was it ultimately led to a complete reversal of transfer policy.
United have abandoned chasing big Galactico style names and are focused on young, emerging talent focused on their careers and not money.
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