Such is the curious cycle of football, Arsène Wenger could hardly believe his luck when one year after that infamous £40,000,001 bid for Luis Suárez he ended up buying arguably the next best thing.

The sequence fell into place like dominos: Arsenal could not get Suárez, but Barcelona could, and to generate the funds Alexis Sánchez found himself expendable at Camp Nou. Wenger finally got hold of a South American forward with the street fighting qualities he recognises as invaluable in the modern game.

The Arsenal manager has observed key similarities between Suárez, who departed the Premier League as its highest intensity striker, and Sánchez, who has made an impressive start to his career in England. Wenger offered an insight into Sánchez’s personality which makes sense to anyone who watches his perpetual motion, buzzing energy game. Every day on the quiet fields of Hertfordshire, he attacks training with the same zest. “He doesn’t walk out, he runs out,” Wenger smiles.

“He has a natural level of energy that is unbelievable. You would love everyone to have it but it does not work like that.” Wenger roots Sánchez’s intrinsic determination to a tough background in Tocopilla, in the industrial north of Chile close to the Atacama desert.

“I said many times: when you see where he comes from, where he was born, and you think he finishes at Barcelona and Arsenal, you need something special or it does not work,” says Wenger.

He speaks admiringly of the hot streak and indomitable desire that is shared by Suárez and Sánchez. “There are similarities,” Wenger adds. “Suárez sometimes gave the ball to the opponent but he won it back straightaway. Sánchez is the same. There is no time between offence and defence. They are very quick as well.”

Statistically, in the Premier League so far, the Chilean tops Arsenal’s rankings in terms of goals, assists, and key passes. Overall he has eight goals from 15 appearances. For a player still finding his rhythm in a new league with new team-mates, those numbers are excellent – favourable even compared with Suárez’s when the Uruguayan first arrived in the Premier League (four goals from 13 games in his first season).

Stylistically, these players epitomise the raw spirit that Wenger laments has been ironed out of European football. “If we look across Europe and the world of football, then South America is the only continent to develop strikers today. You will see that at least 80% come from South America.

“So we have to question ourselves: what can we add to our academies to develop strikers again? If you look at the 60s and 70s in England, even when I arrived in 1996, in every club you had strikers that could head the ball, on every cross they were present.” Wenger, warming to the theme, even gave an impression of a powerful attacker fighting for his territory.

“We have less now. Germany went to the World Cup with Miroslav Klose, who is 35. Maybe in our history street football has gone. In street football when you are a 10-year-old, you play with 15-year-olds so you have to be shrewd, you have to show that you are good, you have to fight to win impossible balls.

“When it is all a bit more formulated then it is less about developing your individual skill, your fighting attitude. We have lost that a little bit in football. Society has changed. We are much more protected than we were 30 years ago. We have all changed. We have all become a bit softer.”

That is why, according to Wenger, the South Americans are leading the way in forward play, as the likes of Sánchez and Suárez grew up in a less cosseted and less organised football environment. “They played street football, park football, football with friends,” he says.

Wenger is full of praise for the way Sánchez has adapted to life at Arsenal, helped in part by the fact there are currently eight players in the first-team squad whose native tongue is Spanish. That said, the new boy asks his manager to speak to him in English.

“He wants to learn, he has a very positive attitude. He takes English lessons. He’s a winner. The integration has been fantastic. We have a Spanish colony, now. He doesn’t sit lonely in the dressing room.”

He hardly looks like the sitting quietly type. Which is exactly why Wenger is enjoying rebuilding his attack around this bundle of strong, striking, South American energy.