Manchester United are still suffering from the contract they gave to former Arsenal winger Alexis Sanchez, according to a report.
Sam Dean and James Ducker report for The Telegraph that Manchester United are still paying the price for the decision to hand Alexis Sanchez a contract worth £560,000 a week in 2018.
Apart from the initial wasted costs, with United spending millions every month on a player who scored three times in 32 Premier League appearances for them, there were long-term effects as well.
United spent £9m just to terminate Sanchez’s contract early, and in the meantime plenty of other players used his wages as a benchmark for their own new deals.
The Telegraph report that many players already earning £100,000 or more effectively asked to double their salaries, with the likes of Marcus Rashford, David de Gea, and even Victor Lindelof all getting huge pay bumps.
To make matters worse, United never found a way to reset the balance. Whilst Arsenal took the hit by terminating big contracts and refreshing the squad, United kept making the same mistake of signing older players on big wages.
The likes of Rashford and Lindelof are obviously still at the club to this day, taking home their big salaries despite contributing little on the pitch right now.
Whilst many Arsenal fans are probably still a little bitter about how things ended with Sanchez, the upside was that he’d already contributed a lot in north London.
The winger scored 80 goals for Arsenal and assisted 44, more goals and more assists than he’s managed at any other club in his career. And he helped Arsene Wenger’s team to a couple of FA Cups, scoring in both finals.
That could all have been undone by a successful move to rivals United, but instead all he did was give them years of financial headaches. It’s no surprise you never hear United fans in the stands singing Sanchez’s name like they do with Robin van Persie’s.