My recollection was we made our interest in Sanchez known the previous summer. Wenger wanted him to sign a new contract, but insisted he'd rather keep him there for the season & allow him to leave on a free, rather than sell him to City.
Sanchez's sad & frustrated demeanour was affecting squad morale, so come January the money men at Arsenal decided to listen to offers, whilst they tried to sign Lamar for £94m.
City offered £20m for Sanchez & reputedly the deal offered to the player during the summer still stood. However, Arsenal wanted £40m, & so started the game of poker & who'd blink first.
Arsenal's bid for Lamar was accepted & terms agreed, but Lamar went cold on the deal, hence Wenger wanting to row back on selling Sanchez, but Arsenal's board just wanted to cut their losses when Sanchez made it clear he would not sign an extension.
It was coming toward the end of the window & all the signs were that Arsenal would have to accept our £20m bid, until ManUre stepped in & offered £38m & Henrikh Mkhitaryan in exchange for Sanchez.
ManUre also offered Sanchez a reputed £400k per week basic wage, plus hefty achievable bonuses which could eventually add up to £600k per week. Arsenal accepted the bid & allowed Moureen to speak to Sanchez.
After the ManUre talks, Sanchez apparently went back to City & told them of the offer made by Old Toilet & asked if we were willing to match it, but City reiterated we already had an agreement with the player & on a point of principle, we weren't going to get into an auction.
Sanchez's team apparently said they wanted time to consider both offers, but City told them they'd make it easy for Sanchez & announced we'd ended our interest in the player.
This left Sanchez with the options of remaining at Arsenal or moving to Old Toilet & the rest is history.
He fucked us over twice. The first being an agreement to join when he was at Udinese, but he jumped at the chance to go to Barça when they came calling at the eleventh hour.
We were interested when he was leaving Barça, but couldn't enter the race to sign him because of our FFP fine & restrictions, & then obviously the last time he went back on our agreement to sign for ManUre.
He'd have been perfect for City, but greed made his stellar career fizzle out to nothing, so fuck the piano banging berk...