fantasy premier league transfers – new player profile – Alexis Sanchez

Arsenal have signed the 25 year old 5 foot 7 inch Chilean International winger/forward Alexis Sanchez for a reported fee of £32m from Barcelona.  We’ll look at the background to the transfer, his stats and his fantasy premier league prospects.

fantasy premier league transfers – new player profile – Alexis Sanchez

Last year Arsenal had 2 problems.  1 the lack of an alternative to Oliver Giroud. Added to that statement is the question of whether Giroud is of sufficent quality to be a title winning striker.  2 was the lack of pace in the side when Walcott was injured.  Sides could push up and squeeze the midfield area knowing that Arsenal had little threat in behind.

As a general point last season Arsenal scored 68 goals, 3 less than strikerless (at least in Mourinho’s mind) Chelsea and 33 less than Liverpool and 34 less than Man City.

Alexis Sanchez will certainly help to close off the 2nd problem, whether he will contribute to allieviating the 1st is still an open question.  However only Messi, Ronaldo and Diego Costa scored more goals in La Liga than Sanchez last season.

Sanchez is a small but strong player with pace and trickery and is unquestionably world class as we saw from the World Cup.

Here’s what Wenger had to say on his arrival

“As many people have seen during the World Cup this summer, Alexis is a fantastic footballer and we are delighted that he is joining us at Arsenal Football Club,” 

“Alexis will add power, creativity and much quality to our squad and we are all looking forward to him joining up with us in a few weeks.

“He has consistently produced top-quality performances at the highest level for a number of seasons now and we are all excited to see him integrate into the Arsenal squad. I’m sure all Arsenal supporters will join me in welcoming Alexis to our club.”

Here’s his league stats.  No European or Cup stats in the table:

So at the moment we don’t know if he’s going to be classified as a forward or a midfielder in FPL.  However his stats were pretty impressive for Barcelona last season.   He scored or assisted once every 77 minutes.  Now you have to say that Barca and Real (and last season Atletico) dominate Lal Liga more than the premier league is dominated so his stats could be inflated somewhat.  His Udinese stats were certainly nothing special.  If you take Suarez as the best stat in EPL Suarez scored or assisted every 57 minutes last year.  Sturridge was similar to Sanchez with a goal or assist every 73 minutes although a different type of player.  Walcott, who seems a more similar player, if more direct and without the trickery, this year was a goal or assist every 86 minutes and last year every 88 minutes.  Giroud was a goal or assist every 123 minutes.  So its clear on stats alone we have a quality player here thats for sure, even allowing for some Barca distortion of the stats.  Certainly the World Cup emphasised this with a number of excellent displays.

In the Champions league he’s played with 3 goals and 5 assists.  He’s returned a goal or assist every 168 minutes.  I don’t think you would expect the returns as the same but this is some drop.  Interestingly though Walcott’s also dropped from 86/88 to 131 minutes for a goal or assist.  No where near as drastic.  Sanchez’s Chile international record is excellent though with 24 goals from 60 games.

Fantasy premier league prospects

It’s hard to imagine that given the size of the fee that and the quality of the player that gametime will be an issue.  At worst he’ll probably be rested for the domestic cups I expect.  What is good news from that perspective is that over 7 seasons he’s averaged 29 league games per season which shows that he isn’t an injury prone player.  He’s also used to competing on a number of fronts with Barca.  He hasn’t  experienced not having a winter break yet but this is an issue for every player coming into the premier league.

So with gametime secure lets get to the 2 issues of whether he will be classified as a forward or midfielder and where will he play?

Time and hopefully pre-season on the position front obviously will resolve all these issues but that shouldn’t stop us theorising.

My instinct is that he will be classified as forward primarily on the basis that he played in the front 3 of 4-3-3 for Barcelona.  That will defenitely diminish his appeal although as you can see his stats for Barca in 13/14 did stand up to striker comparison.  Arsenal generally played 4-2-3-1 with Giroud leading the line.  Ozil is probably likely to be behind the striker with a when fit Walcott on the right of the attacking 3 midfielders.  The left hand side position has caused some issues with a number of players playing there.  It certainly looks the logical place to me to start out for Sanchez.

In Spain he was noted for his conversion rate of chances. His conversion rate of chances and big chances especially was phenomenal.  His chance conversion was even better than RVPs in his 2011-2012 season.  This does raise the possibility that he could be played as a striker in preference (or as a pair with Giroud).  Or even as a number 10 behind Giroud with Ozil moved out right.  Ozil gave a few demonstrations last year of why defensively that wouldn’t be such a great idea though.

Wenger does have a history of this though,with his conversion of Thierry Henry to a striker from a winger.  To me this seems a step too far at least initially.  Henry is 6’2″.  Sanchez 5’7″.  There’s little precedent for that in the premier league.  Aguero is also of short stature but Pellegrini has rarely played him up front alone.  It’s possible that he could play as a strike pair but more likely as a number 10 if that is the route Wenger goes.  It’s also hard to see lining up as a central striker when we haven’t seen him doing that for Barca where he mainly played on the right of a 4-3-3. Also it seems a bit of a waste of his abilities to run and beat people.   Having him with his back to goal a significant portion of the time doesn’t seem logical.  Continual links between Remy and Arsenal also cloud the striker theory.

Pre-season will definitely give us some clues on these positional matters.  Sanchez’s classification on FPL will be one of first things I check when the sites opens.

Summary

• Sanchez will add goals and much needed pace to push defences back
• Excellent goal and assist stats comparable with Sturridge and Walcott
• Hard to see any gametime issues
• FPL classification will be interesting
• Position needs monitoring in preseason.  Initial thoughts on the left of 3 in 4-2-3-1.  Maybe behind striker?

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fantasy premier league transfers

fantasy premier league transfers