Manchester City Chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak has admitted that his club pulled out of the race to sign Alexis Sanchez because the finances involved were too high.
The Chile international eventually moved to City’s arch-rivals Manchester United from Arsenal last January in a swap deal involving Armenian playmaker Henrikh Mkhitaryan.
United are rumoured to have made Sanchez the highest paid player in the Premier League on a weekly salary of £500,000.
While Al-Mubarak did admit that Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola is a massive fan of Sanchez, the economics of a deal for a player who is 29-years-old just did not make sense.
“We identified him as a player that was a good fit for this club,” said Al-Mubarak in the Amazon Prime All or Nothing documentary.
“Pep was very keen to have him join (in 2017) but it didn’t happen.
“We looked at the situation again in January but the situation changed for us from how we looked at it in the summer and how we looked at it in the winter.
“And the reality is the economics simply didn’t work any more.”