Alexis Sanchez: Have Manchester United learned from one of their biggest transfer mistakes?

Have United learned the error of their ways, even with the same recruitment structure in place?

Farewell then, maybe, to Alexis Sanchez. You earned approximately £32m in basic wages and marketing rights at Manchester United, a signing-on fee of at least £1.1m, up to £75,000 for each of your 36 starts, but you never saw that £2m bonus for scoring 40 goals or more.

These back-of-the-fag-packet figures, based on details revealed by Football Leaks last year, are the best estimate at the price United have paid for the privilege of owning Sanchez’s contract. That he should have failed on the one performance-related clause disclosed says it all.

It does not necessarily end here, though. United will continue to pay Sanchez around £5.4m while he spends the next nine months on loan at Internazionale. There is no obligation or option to buy, or any guarantee that Sanchez will regain form, meaning he could yet return to Old Trafford to sit out his contract in full.

It should be remembered that the terms of Sanchez’s contract are so high because he did not cost a fee except for the estimated £30m valuation of Henrikh Mkhitaryan, who moved to Arsenal in return.

But any which way you slice it, it is not cheap for a player who scored fewer league goals last season than Ashley Westwood and Yan Valery. Ciaran Clark and Lucas Perez scored three times more, N’Golo Kanté and Karlan Grant four times more. Lucas Moura and Nathaniel Mendez-Laing scored twice as many at Old Trafford alone.

It is also true that Sanchez has not only cost United money but leverage. The first hints of unrest between Paul Pogba, then-manager Jose Mourinho and the club itself happened quickly after Sanchez became the squad highest-earning player. The contract negotiations with David de Gea have been similarly complicated by Sanchez’s salary.

What made United believe this was a good deal? It is easy to forget that only two summers ago Sanchez was arguably the Premier League’s most-effective and well-rounded attacking player. 24 goals and 11 assists during his final full season at Arsenal made Pep Guardiola and Manchester City, back-to-back champions in waiting, extremely interested.

But Sanchez was also a 29-year-old who had made his professional debut at just 16, with something approaching 35,000 career minutes in his legs. He had famously gone without an extended break from football for the best part of five years due to international commitments with Chile, too.

After just the first of those five years, Arsene Wenger said Sanchez was already “in the red zone”. Mourinho spent the months after Sanchez’s arrival promising journalists that a summer break would bring out the best in his new player, but Sanchez missed three months of the following season through injury, including Mourinho’s final games in charge.

All that is easy to identify in hindsight and it was hardly guaranteed that Sanchez’s performances would decline so dramatically, but the risk that his signing would be deemed a failure was always there. And as the cost of signing Sanchez increased, so did that risk. That was why City withdrew their interest, leaving United with a relatively clear run at the player.

Now that a line can be drawn under Sanchez’s United career – to an extent, at least – many will ask whether he is the worst signing in the club’s recent history. If he sees out the entirety of his contract without significantly contributing to either trophy-winning success or demonstrable progress at Old Trafford, he surely will be.

But a more pertinent question is whether United will ever show such poor judgement in the market again. Recent signs are positive. This past summer, the focus has been on signing young players who retain a resale value even if they fail. At 26-years-old and £80m, Harry Maguire is the riskiest of the three major arrivals, but he at least fills a problem position.

Maguire did not arrive at Old Trafford as a luxury addition, on the back of a difficult six months at his former club, demanding to be made the club’s highest-earner on a long-term contract and with his 30th birthday around the corner. Nor did Aaron Wan-Bissaka. Nor did Daniel James, who is able to play in a similar position as Sanchez but who is, in particular, of a radically different profile.

The concern, though, is that so long as what is essentially the same recruitment structure that oversaw Sanchez’s signing remains in place, it could always happen again. The search for a technical director continues. Only one window of significant activity has passed since it began. Sanchez was a costly mistake and could yet prove costlier still. We will know if United have learned their lesson from the next few windows to come.