Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain: Sanchez has brought back 'winning mentality' to Arsenal

Arsenal celebrating after yet another goal by Alexis Sanchez

Arsenal midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain feels that new team-mate Alexis Sánchez has been like a “breath of fresh air” for Arsenal and the reason behind Arsenal’s good form.

Sánchez, who arrived from Barcelona in the summer has been in excellent form at North London, having scored 14 goals in 22 appearances. In their last premier league match, the Chilean scored the only goal of the game to beat Southampton 1-0 at home.

Brought winning mentality back

It is reported that the England international showered praises for his team-mate for his game-changing goal and providing a winning mentality to the club.

“There is no rest for him,” Chamberlain told BT Sport.

“On recovery days he wants to be playing and he is not happy if he is not allowed to play the game till the end. In training, he wants to win. He has brought that winning mentality to the side and I think it definitely rubs off on a lot of players.

“It has been an eye-opener for me. To make it to the top and to be able perform like he does week in, week out you have got to be an absolute winner and you never want to lose at all.

“He is not happy when he doesn’t score. If I scored as many goals as he has at this stage, I’d be over the moon. He has been brilliant for us and a breath of fresh air, so hopefully he can stay in the form that he is in and we can help him out to keep producing goals like he has been.” He added.

I had to go off with pain in my heart: Alderweireld

Toby Alderweireld (L) signalling to the bench that he has to come off

Arsenal would have struggled without Sanchez to beat the Saints, whose defender Alderweireld had to leave the field due to a hamstring injury. Southampton had to play approximately the final ten minutes with only ten men, as they had already used up their stipulated substitutions and Sanchez exploited the situation to secure a win.

“I think everybody knows what happens with your hamstring, you can’t run anymore, so with pain in my heart I had to go off,” said Alderweireld.

“That was really shit and, unfortunately, we let a goal in.

“On Thursday I will have a scan and I hope it’s not too serious, but for sure a hamstring is always bad, so we’ll see. I’m hoping to recover very soon, very fast. I will do everything to be back very quickly on the field, but that’s for the future and I can’t tell.”

Southampton’s preparations for Monday’s big match against Manchester United have been hampered by injuries to Alderweireld, Jack Cork and Dusan Tadic. They have had a great start to the season barring the four defeats against Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspurs, Manchester City and Arsenal. The defeat to Arsenal in the mid-week game could prove the critics’ doubts about their third standings because of the kind fixtures till now, but that talk annoyed the Belgian.

“Maybe last week we were not that good, but today we played very good against a good team, especially here, where it’s very difficult to play. I think we played very good and I think we deserved a point at least. We’re still there and we will work very hard to get the points again. We will do our best.