I think both Chamberlain and Walcott went for excellent fees, to be fair to the club. They had one good knee combined (which has since been injured) to stand on and brought in like £60 million. We basically swapped them straight off for Auba. Brilliant business. I have zero issues with the £16 million we got paid for Szczesny too. He would have been awful for us if he'd come back here.
The big miss was to not take the £80 million or whatever it was City offered for Alexis Sanchez. There was a precedent though in fairness: we sold Robin van Persie to United for what was thought to be an outstanding fee at the time, and in retrospect it turned out to be one of the worst things we've ever done. It might have cost us a league title while earning it for United. No one knew exactly where the market was at the summer of 2017, signified by us offering £80 million for Thomas Lemar.
Looking at our business over the last few years, you have to conclude that our big issue wasn't selling players but buying them. When we finally opened up the pursestrings we got Mustafi, Xhaka and Lacazette. Laca's a far better player now than when we signed him to be honest, but I think he'd still get a lot of criticism if Aubameyang weren't around to take the pressure off with his goals. That was a new spine for the team, it cost a lot of cash, and it wasn't top four quality.
