Alexis Sanchez jersey number 7 breaks Manchester United's record of shirt sales, generated more interaction on social media than Neymar move to PSG (Details, pics)

Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward has revealed that Alexis Sanchez jersey number 7 broke the club’s record of shirt sales during the winter transfer window of any season in the past. The 29-year-old forward joined the Red Devils while Henrikh Mkhitaryan move to Arsenal in a swap deal last month.

And the administrator believes the impact of the Chilean forward’s arrival at the Old Trafford was greater than when Neymar left Barcelona for Paris Saint Germain last summer." Alexis Sanchez has set a new January signing record in terms of shirt sales, three times the previous record."While speaking with the club’s sponsors in a conference call as the club publishes its second-quarter reports for 2017-18, Woodward claimed that the Sanchez-Mkhitaryan swap captured the imagination of supporters across the internet like never before too.

"This trade generated some interesting social media stats," Woodward said. "It was the biggest United post on Instagram with two million likes and comments, the most shared United Facebook post ever, the most retweeted United post ever, and the hashtag #Alexis7 was the number one trending topic on Twitter worldwide.

“To put that into context, the announcement posts generated 75 per cent more interactions than the announcement of the sale of the world’s most-expensive player last summer when Neymar moved from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain.”

He (Woodward) also revealed that the Premier League has continued to break more grounds all over the globe as the league’s consumers have increased with close to 10% audiences, most especially in Asia and North America.

“Reports of the death of live sport are greatly exaggerated,” Woodward commented. “I’ve just come from a Premier League meeting where research shows that the league’s global cumulative audience has increased nine per cent year-on-year, with particularly strong increases in Asia and North America.”

The administrator also hinted that the league organizers and the club owners are looking at adjusting the heavy fixtures during the winter season, thereby admitting that the EPL players might going on break during this period like other top leagues in Europe.

“I need to be careful around this as it’s a very sensitive point in time because the first round of domestic bids are due in on Friday, and all I can really say is that if you look at past history we would expect that the entire process of selling the domestic rights will conclude in a relatively short period of times, within a couple of weeks.”

“The Premier League has been in discussions with the FA and EFL for several months regarding the challenges of the increasingly congested English football calendar and ways in which we can work together to ease fixture congestion while also giving players a mid-season break.

“Provided space can be found in the calendar, we are open to this in principle and will continue constructive discussions with our football stakeholders to seek a workable solution.”

Alexis Sanchez joined Manchester United in January having spent four years at Arsenal scoring 60 goals in 122 matches in all appearances for the Gunners.

Before playing for the Emirates Stadium outfit, the Chilean had played for Barcelona and recorded his name on the score sheet 39 times in 88 games, and that was after leaving Udinese – where he scored 20 goals in 95 matches in 2011.

The 29-year-old led his country to back-to-back Copa America titles in 2015 and 2016 respectively, beating Argentina on both occasions. He also won two FA Cup titles with Arsenal as well as other titles while in Spain.