Sanchez breaks out with hat trick as Arsenal hangs loss on Leicester City

As long as the summer was for Alexis Sanchez, he’s taken just as long to find the back of the net this season.

That changed on Saturday as the Arsenal star scored three times to lead the Gunners’ 5-2 walkover of Leicester City at the King Power Stadium.

“He is back to his level,” Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said after the match. “He won a big competition with Chile – the Copa America. I think … to adjust to the game on a mental level takes some time.”

Wenger gave Sanchez an extended vacation after he led Chile to its first international trophy this summer, though that didn’t stop him from playing him straight away as a substitute in Arsenal’s first Premier League fixture, a 2-0 loss to West Ham in which the attack looked toothless.

Since then, Sanchez has played a role in Arsenal wins at Crystal Palace and home to Stoke City, but he couldn’t break onto the score sheet until the 33rd minute against Leicester. Sometimes it takes easy goals to get a goal-scorer going again, and they don’t come much easier than this sitter:

The second goal was a trademark bit of intuition as Sanchez knifed through the center of the box and rose high to nod home a nice ball played in by Mesut Ozil:

Sanchez sealed the three points with his third goal in the 81st minute, a one-bounce missile set up by a nice touch near the top corner of the box:

Theo Walcott and Olivier Giroud bookended Sanchez's hat trick with goals of their own, while Jamie Vardy scored twice for the hosts. Leicester City came into the match as the last unbeaten side in the Premier League, but they had no answer for Sanchez once he found his form again.

Few teams do. Sanchez’s speed, instincts, shiftiness and technical ability have given defenders nightmares since transferring to North London in the summer of 2014. He led Arsenal with 25 goals last season, but he also made a staggering 52 appearances in 55 games across all competitions.

After the season, he went straight into training with Chile and was never really afforded time off until July, and Wenger decided to extend that vacation through Arsenal’s preseason schedule.

Wenger decided the burden of erasing Chile’s trophy-less history deserved a respite before returning to bear the burden of Arsenal’s attack.

“I could see in training a different player in the last week or two and he has shown that today,” Wenger said. “I believe going forward he always looked dangerous.”