Robin van Persie believes Alexis Sanchez has struggled at Manchester United because he arrived into a defensive team when he joined the club from Arsenal in January 2018.
Sanchez's move to United has been nothing short of disastrous and the club would have sold him this summer had there been any takers for the Chile international.
Van Persie, who made the same move from United to Arsenal five-and-a-half years prior to Sanchez's switch, believes he thrived at Old Trafford because he arrived when the club was in a far better state.
“It’s a different time,” Van Persie told The Telegraph. “Over the past couple of years a lot has changed. There are a lot of impressions from fans, from social media, he is constantly getting hit about his wages. It’s negative, so he starts negative, and maybe that is difficult.
“For him it was difficult because he was coming into a defensive playing team. I came into a team with all the mature players there already: Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Michael Carrick. At Arsenal I was one of the older ones, captain, and here I could just come in and have fun, because the guys sorted all the other stuff beside it.
“Mentally, I was just having fun. I was happy, I was just enjoying it, really. I did not think about the consequences. I was not using social media back then, so I was not really bothered about what people said. When I went outside it was all positive so I was in my own little bubble of being happy.”
