Arsenal vs Stoke City: Arsene Wenger reveals Alexis Sanchez's 'short' technique is key to star striker role

Tom Doyle10 December 2016

Alexis Sanchez is thriving as a striker at Arsenal because of his all-round ability to both drop deep as well as beat the last defender, according to Arsene Wenger.

Sanchez is in the form of his Arsenal career since being switched to a centre-forward role at the start of the 2016/17 season by Wenger, with the 27-year-old scoring 13 goals in 20 competitions for the Gunners so far this term to keep the likes of Olivier Giroud and Lucas Perez out of the team.

The Chile international is due to start against Stoke on Saturday as Arsenal look to return to the top of the Premier League, and Wenger believes Sanchez - who has 18 months left to run on his contract - has the right mix of talents in order to fully exploit defences as a main striker.

"He has developed very well as a centre forward because he has found a good mixture between coming short and going in behind," Wenger told Arsenal's official website. "He has more freedom as well and he takes advantage of his short technique in the middle much more.

The Arsenal players with expiring contracts

1/5

"I always saw that in Alexis and I must honestly say that when I played him there last year or two years ago I was wrong. The times I tried him through the middle were not convincing and I even remember against Everton I changed it at half-time.

"Sometimes when you have too many players you cannot attempt something which isn’t immediately conclusive because you’re under pressure. If it doesn’t work in one or two games and you have a top player on the bench, you’re tempted to change it very early.

"However, this year it clicked very early in the season because he took advantage of the fact Olivier Giroud was not here and not ready, so I was able to give him a run of games and he’s accepted that role very well."

You can follow Arsenal vs Stoke live with Standard Sport
Click here for more information.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in