Mikel Arteta has revealed that it was Emiliano Martinez who asked to leave Arsenal this summer.
The Argentinean had been at the club for 10 years, but it was in his tenth year that he finally had a run in the first team.
When Bernd Leno got injured in June, it afforded him the chance to play for the club and he took his chance well.
He was so good that it began to look like he was the better goalkeeper. He asked the club to make him number one, but Arteta stuck to Leno and sold Martinez to Aston Villa.
Arsenal came under fire for selling the in-form player, but Arteta has now revealed that the goalie wanted to leave if he wasn’t going to be guaranteed to be the club’s number one.
He also said that Arsenal considered the economics of the deal and they decided to do what is right.
He told the club’s official website: “He had a career of 10 years here. It wasn’t just the last six or eight months. You have to look at everything he did through his time at the club. Obviously, it wasn’t in my plans to sell him, but we gave him the chance because he deserved it. He performed really really well but we have to balance the books.
“We have to make the right choices in the market and obviously, I couldn’t guarantee him to be the number one. He’s a very ambitious person, he has been working really hard and he can see now that the opportunity is there. He’s got the opportunity to play with Argentina and when a player asks you to do that I think you have to be open enough and tell him what you think about him. If he makes the decision to leave, you should try to support him because he deserves it for the way he has served the club over the years.”
