Thursday, June 19, 2014

Alexis Sanchez for £20m is too good to be true

Though it's hard to believe anyone would offer £26m for Adam Lallana, what's even more unimaginable is Barcelona letting Alexis Sanchez go for only £20m.  Considering that they paid £22m for him from Udinese, it is probably only media-created rubbish.  According to SkySportsBarça has come out and said Sanchez is not for sale.  Juventus apparently offered £12m for him, that's just insulting, but I bet Barcelona would have second thoughts if someone came in for £30m and would probably jump to sell at £35m.  But is he worth it?

The thing about Sanchez is that he's a goal creating machine, not only for himself, but for his teammates as well.  His chances created per 90 is only a 1.8, which is not bad, but his goals created per 90 is a solid 1.1.  For some perspective, Suarez' gcp90 is 1.3 and Sturridge's is the same as Sanchez at 1.1.  Adding the Chilean would be devastating to opponent's defenses as those three could average 3.5 goals created per match just by themselves.

He is also a deadly shooter.  52.8% of shots were on goal and 20% overall found the back of the net.  He bettered both Suarez (44.8%) and Sturridge (42.4%) in the accuracy department, but Sturridge bettered him on shot percentage at 21.2 with Suarez having a very respectable 17.1%.

Sanchez does have his faults though, his back pass percentage is a horrid 63.7%, which means even his meager 79.7% passing rate is not even that good going forward.  Also his TTI90 is 13, which would put him behind only Suarez among regular starters for Liverpool.  Surprisingly though, he's a decent tackler with a per match rate of 2.2 and a success percentage of 47.6.

The bottom line is that Alexis Sanchez will not turn 26 until December, which means he has plenty of productive years in front of him.  I don't think we'll try and buy him, but I don't see how it would hurt to put £25-28m on the table to see if they budge.  We can add Borini and Assaidi to the deal, so we can save face when they sell them to Sunderland and Stoke at a discount.

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