I agree Ric. I said before that I genuinely think Wenger wanted to keep the Ox, Sanchez and Ozil and in his delusion I think he thought he could get at least 2 of them to sign new contracts.
I think the implosion that was the Liverpool game opened his eyes, and after some harsh words and soul searching reality hit him, and that's when Arsenal became open to negotiation for wantaway players.
The Liverpool game opened up our end for selling, but ironically the manner of defeat made it harder for us to replace, so it became a catch 22 situation.
Its the only thing that makes sense. Many were saying Lacazette was the replacement, well if that was the case we just would have sold. Many said we were playing a game for our fans and waiting until we couldn't replace, again we would have just sold. Therefore I think its obvious it was kind of last minute, hence we would only sell if we could replace.
Im not sure it was a deliberate act of stringing along either. Don't underestimate how incompetent our transfer negotiation team are.