The end of Arsene Wenger’s reign at Arsenal saw the club make some questionable transfers, and these mistakes took years to rectify.
Mikel Arteta has now taken Arsenal to a place where his young squad are challenging for the Premier League title, but it took a long time for him and Edu Gaspar to correct the mistakes made by previous regimes prior to their returns to the club they played for.
In Wenger’s final season, there was chaos on and off the pitch as several key players left, and Arsenal had the unenviable task of replacing them. Whilst they did find success for a while with January signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, there was one deal which ended in failure for all involved.
Arsenal suffered disaster after trading Alexis Sanchez for Henrikh Mkhitaryan
Alexis Sanchez was a star player for Arsenal after joining from Barcelona in 2014. However, three years later he was keen on an exit, and Manchester City failed with a deadline-day move in the summer of 2017.
By January 2018, an exit was inevitable, and he ended up following a rarely-trodden path from Arsenal to Manchester United.
However, instead of receiving a transfer fee, Arsenal were given attacking midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan in exchange. The Armenian was a big-name arrival at Old Trafford from Borussia Dortmund in 2016, but had failed to settle under Jose Mourinho.
Both players ended up flopping for their new clubs, with Sanchez later admitting that he wanted to return to Arsenal as soon as he arrived, and Mkhitaryan eventually departed for Roma, before ending up at Inter Milan.
Alexis Sanchez and Henrikh Mkhitaryan win Serie A with Inter Milan
In a wildly unpredictable turn of events, six years after the ultimately disastrous swap deal between Sanchez and Mkhitaryan, both are now teammates at Serie A giants Inter Milan, and both reached the Champions League final last season.
Simone Inzaghi’s side lost to Manchester City in the final, but bounced back strongly this season to put together an outstanding league campaign which has seen them lose just one game.
Inter beat rivals AC Milan in their away allocated fixture at the San Siro last night, which meant that they had secured their 20th Serie A title, and both Sanchez and Mkhitaryan had added more silverware to their collections.
Mkhitaryan has been a key player for Inzaghi this season, scoring twice and assisting 10 times in 43 games across all competitions, lining up in a central midfield role.
Sanchez has taken more of a squad role, with four goals and four assists in 29 games, and was an unused substitute in the historic Milan derby, whilst Mkhitaryan played the entire 90 minutes.
Two players who saw their respective moves to Arsenal and Manchester United fail, have now become Italian champions at the age of 35, with both completing remarkable career revivals.