Alexis Sanchez Facing Month Out With Hamstring Tear, Reports Claim

Some potentially worrying news coming from Alexis Sanchez’s homeland with reports claiming that the attacker is now facing a month out with a hamstring injury.

Sanchez missed last weeks 5-0 win over AstonVilla after picking up a slight hamstring strain during our 3-2 win at Brighton two weeks ago.

Arsene Wenger initially thought it was a minor problem and expected him to be fit to face Tottenham Hotspur this lunchtime.

But the Gunners boss ruled Sanchez out of the trip to White Hart Lane on Thursday, telling Arsenal.com that he was still short of fitness, but hoped he’d return to face Leicester City on Tuesday night.

“The latest is that Alexis is not ready,” he said.

“He is not far away, the Leicester game is a possibility. He is of course very difficult to keep quiet. He is training but it’s light training. He wants to have a go, but I think he is too short [of fitness].”

The boss then gave us hope that the 26-year-old could yet feature against Spurs after telling reporters at his press conference on Friday morning that Sanchez was desperate to play and would be assessed after training.

However, the Express are citing reports from Chilean newspaper La Tercera which claim that Sanchez is now facing a month on the sidelines as it’s feared the ‘minor’ strain has developed in to a full-on tear.

The paper suggests that Sanchez’s agent, Fernando Felicevich, has travelled to London to be with the attacker and find out how this injury has come about.

Obviously it’s not clear how much truth there is behind this report but if it proves to be accurate then Sanchez is set to miss our next five fixtures against Spurs, Leicester City, Middlesbrough, Crystal Palace and Monaco.

Arsenal have a poor recent history with injuries so it wouldn’t surprise me if the Sanchez injury was worse than first thought. Let’s not forget Danny Welbeck’s thigh injury started off as a ‘one week’ injury and he’s just coming back six weeks later.

However, the thing that gives me hope is that Arsene said yesterday morning that Sanchez would take part in training on Friday and there’s no way that would happen if there was any chance he had a tear in his hamstring and was facing a month out.

I suppose the real worry is that Sanchez did train on Friday, made the injury worse and is now facing a month out and the newspapers in Chile got hold of it first.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens over the next few days. If Sanchez isn’t in the squad at all against Spurs, I may start to worry. If he then doesn’t feature against Leicester on Tuesday, it’s panic stations!