As you probably know, Alexis picked up a pretty nasty ankle injury during the Copa America final at the end of June.

We all looked on with concern as he posted pictures of the horrific bruising and swelling and we wondered ourselves if he would be fit for the league opener against Liverpool on 14th August.

Now, the press is full of reports claiming that Sanchez missing out is a very real possibility but it does seem, having looked into the claims more closely, that there is a lot of guesswork going on.

Of course, it doesn’t take a great imagination to see Alexis missing the game given the state of his ankle, and when you throw in the fact that Mesut Ozil, Olivier Giroud, Laurent Koscielny and Aaron Ramsey will only return to training eight days before the match, you suddenly have a much more exciting story – one that was written by a single outlet and then churned out, unchanged and without anything new being added, by all the others, making it seem like a much more serious issue than it might actually be.

Sanchez has been working for the last few weeks at getting his ankle ready, not the best use of his summer holidays for sure, but perhaps a blessing as it has forced him to take it a bit easier than he might otherwise have done.

As for if he’ll be fit for the game against Liverpool? We probably won’t know until much closer to the match itself and certainly not before he’s returned to London Colney.