Willian has spoken about his exit from Arsenal and revealed that he was the one that pushed to leave and the Gunners never asked him to do that.
The Brazilian has returned to Brazil where he now plays for Corinthians in the country’s top flight.
He is a happier man now and admitted that he struggled during his time at the Emirates.
His departure from Arsenal meant he left a lot of money on the table because he still had two seasons left on his big-money deal.
However, the former Chelsea attacker maintains that there are things that are more important than money in life and one of them is happiness.
He said he wasn’t happy and informed the Gunners that he needed to leave and join another club where he would be happier and they agreed to mutually end his contract.
“My year at Arsenal was a bit complicated. I really couldn’t adapt to the club. I wasn’t happy there,” Willian told Arena SBT as quoted by Sport Witness.
“To make it very clear too, it wasn’t the club that wanted me to leave. I wanted to leave the club. I expressed my feeling, said I wasn’t happy. I said I wanted to look elsewhere, another place to play. And so there was this decision to leave.
“There are things in life that money can’t buy, money doesn’t pay for. You have joy, happiness, peace, a solid family. I think this is the most important thing for me.”
He will not look back on his time at the Emirates fondly, but he had a fine stint at Chelsea and will remain a fan favourite there.
if this is a truthful account, especially when it comes to his claims that there wasn’t any “under the table” remuneration, kudos to him for walking away after a dumpster fire of a season in North London…of course, I’m still a little skeptical…regardless, it still appeared to me as if he came to the club ill-prepared and out of shape, which is totally on him…unlike Arteta, Willian wasn’t afforded the luxury of a mulligan, as MA should have never tried to cheat the proposed “rebuild” mandate, by pursuing misguided short-cuts, yet he not only survived the potential culling, he was likewise given the largest transfer budget ever…still incredibly baffling to me
If I understand you correctly TRVL, the signing of Willian was short-term-ism and therefore, not part of the rebuild due to his age etc
This is something that really bugs you and I’m not entirely sure why. Hot from winning the FACup, a serial winner like Willian ‘could’ have made all the difference and prevented another lowly finish. I didn’t think that he would be so ineffective so the reality was somewhat different.
The length of the contract was a definite error but I’m not going to hang out Arteta to dry for that. He clearly thought that with Willian in the team that a top 6 spot should have been achievable and the club could kick on from there with youth at its core as we have seen this season.
I have mixed feelings about Willian. I believed the press releases about the tearing up his contract but then remembered that he turned down America because not enough money was on the table. Difficult to know what to think
Now, SueP, if Arteta had managed to secure Willian’s services for considerably less term and wages, with no assurances regarding his playing time, then I might agree with your assessment of the situation…of course, that wasn’t the case, in fact the exact opposite, as he wasn’t coming here to be a “super” sub, like the role he had most recently played at Chelski, which ultimately meant he was going to negatively impact the development of our younger players and/or our incredibly expensive recruit Pepe
it simply made no sense, unless Arteta actually started to read his own headlines and actually felt that we were a player or two away from competing for things…with this in mind, if that was his honest belief, then he should have been summarily dismissed following the season, considering the abject failure of his “plan”, instead he was actually given a professional mulligan and a boatload of cash previously unseen at this club
btw yours or my assessment, pre-acquisition, of Willian has no relevance whatsoever, in the grand scheme of things, as we’re not the one’s getting handsomely compensated to make the difficult organizational decisions like MA and Edu, as such when the entirely wrong decisions are made, there should be serious consequences…unfortunately, this club has shite the bed, time and time again, when it comes to the notion of accountability
Could you possibly précis it for me ?
Fairfan/Wyoming usually gives bullet points which I can grasp… you lose me a lot of the time
I have to ask then – the Pepe situation and the lack of youngsters is down to Willian?
I can only hope that the dastardly duo are on the road to getting anything right that you can applaud as neither were summarily dismissed
come on SueP, what I wrote is certainly not difficult to follow
Arteta was brought in to supposedly get rid of the deadwood and grow as a coach with a relatively youthful nucleus
after winning a rather fortuitous Cup, during covid, he intentionally deviated from that mandate under the misguided notion that he could “retool” with some senior players, like WIllian
by bringing in Willian, for 3 years, on a exceedingly high wage, with playing assurances, he was willing to have him take significant minutes from Pepe, Reiss, Marts and possibly even Saka, in the hopes of competing for things right away
if the goal was to conduct a “rebuild” of sorts, you would never conduct business like this, especially considering the problematic nature of the contract given, as per the particulars stated above
as a result, he put the “rebuild” functionally on hold for another year, likely in the hopes that he wouldn’t have to pursue such a course of action at any point, if things came good
or even worse, he was willing to waste our time with this little selfish endeavour knowing full-well that if it failed miserably he would simply revert back to his original “rebuild” narrative
most managers wouldn’t be afforded the luxury of such a long leash, especially those with a glaring lack of experience, in that if their plan failed to succeed they would be shown the door
TRVL
I have no problem with one oldie possibly saving us another year in the doldrums – I really don’t. If it had worked we’d be as happy as Larry
I cannot see how Willian was possibly responsible for an 8th place finish. I really can’t. As for the youngsters, apart from Saka who you surprisingly mentioned, none of the others are ready for the first team in a regular basis – Willian or not
I just don’t know why a re tool or a rebuild is worth you getting into a lather over. I don’t give a toss how Arteta achieves his goal – as long as this season shows he has learned some lessons from his first season and a half. Points make prizes
I do wonder😊
I dont know why players bother with hose comments. Anyway people would judge them as lazy and cheats. Football is a risky business and compensation structure has been skewed massively since 2000s I believe. Unless and until player compensation is regulated, we would find more instances of “lazy cheats” playing for clubs.
Once again unnecessarily BIAS editing!!!!