Alexis Sánchez semi-outrageous contract demands at Arsenal revealed — report

Ah, schadenfreude.

For the umpteenth time in recent years, Arsenal have once again become the source of much joy and merriment for non-Arsenal fans. Beyond just the humiliation and capitulation they’ve shown against Bayern Munich in the two legs of their knockout round elimination with matching 5-1 losses both home and away, there’s their annual implosion in the Premier League (which might actually take them out of the top four this time around), as well as all the palpable discord happening with Alexis Sanchez and, to a lesser extent, Mesut Ozil, their two biggest stars.

Arsene Wenger’s all too steady management, once considered a good thing, but nowadays just a guarantee of seemingly inevitable and unending disappointment, could possibly be ending this season after 20 years in charge, but that may come as too little too late to keep Alexis, who’s fresh off of a training ground row with his teammates and several weeks of general sulking on and off the pitch.

Sanchez’s contract is set to expire next summer — so they’re a good 8-9 months past the ideal renewal time — and while earlier rumors claimed that the Chilean superstar was demanding upwards of £300,000 per week, according to the Guardian, those demands are more like “just” £250,000. However, they are supposedly non-negotiatable.

Either figure is likely to be outside the boundaries of Arsenal’s much vaunted wage structure, which opens up possibilities for other rich teams like Chelsea. The Guardian does claim that there’s supposedly “a massive offer from a rival club on the table” for Alexis, which basically means that it’s either the Blues or the red half of Manchester, two of Arsenal’s classic modern rivals and one of just a handful of teams who could afford to pay that much to a 28-year-old.

While £250,000 would make Alexis just about the highest paid player at Chelsea, it would not be tremendously more than we’re paying Hazard or Costa or Fàbregas. While there are no doubt plenty of other big clubs tracking the situation — Juventus are often brought up, for example — all in all, Arsenal's woes could very well become Chelsea's fortune next summer.