Wenger backs Sanchez to fill injured Giroud’s shoes
Print Edition
ARSENAL manager Arsene Wenger backed Alexis Sanchez to prove an able deputy for the injured Olivier Giroud after the Chilean forward fired his new club into the Champions League.
Sanchez scored the only goal of the game against Besiktas at the Emirates Stadium on Wednesday to earn Arsenal a 1-0 win that propelled it into the Champions League group phase for the 17th season in succession.
With Wenger revealing afterwards that Giroud could be out for up to four months after undergoing surgery on a broken tibia, it was the ideal moment for Sanchez to showcase his ability to lead the line.
“I bought him to play striker, not to play only on the flanks,” Wenger said.
Sanchez’s goal was his first since his 30 million pound (US$50.4 million) move from Barcelona, but Wenger said that he did not see the 25-year-old’s strike as the first repayment on his hefty fee.
“I don’t see it like that,” said the Frenchman. “He had a good game, not only on the technical side, but on the fighting side. He was mobile, dangerous, and showed as well he has great fighting spirit; qualities that will be very important in the Premier League.”
While Wenger admitted that he was “open” to making new signings before the transfer window closes on September 1, he said that buying players was not the solution to the injuries suffered by players such as Giroud and Mikel Arteta.
“If you want to make anybody happy, you just buy all these players,” said Wenger, who dismissed links with Manchester United forward Danny Welbeck, Serbian striker Nikola Zigic, and former Arsenal midfielder Alex Song.
Asked if Monaco’s prolific Colombian striker Radamel Falcao was within Arsenal’s price range, Wenger responded succinctly: “No.”
Also, Bulgarian club Ludogorets reached the Champions League group stage for the first time when a defender saved two penalties in a shootout after the team’s goalkeeper was sent off late in extra time.
Ludogorets center back Cosmin Moti upstaged everyone with his heroics in Sofia.
Facing 1986 European champion Steaua Bucharest, Ludogorets had used all three substitutes when goalkeeper Vladislav Stoyanov was sent off for a last-man foul with a minute to go with the match locked at 1-1 on aggregate in extra time. That meant Moti was forced into goal. Wearing the shirt of the team’s backup goalkeeper, Moti scored Ludogorets’ first penalty in the shootout before returning to the goal-line to make crucial saves to deny Paul Pirvulescu and Cornel Rapa.
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