Gabby Agbonlahor says Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang deserves credit for agreeing to rip up his Arsenal contract and leave the club for free.
The Gabon star had been banished from the club’s first team by Mikel Arteta, and it seemed there was simply no way back for him.
As Arsenal’s highest earner, it meant the club faced paying him around £350,000-a-week without using him.
He has now taken a pay cut to join Barcelona and saves Arsenal a lot of money.
Former Aston Villa ace, Agbonlahor believes the former AC Milan striker could easily have stayed at the club and collected his cool cash without getting involved.
He tells Football Insider: “There’s talk of him taking a pay cut to go there, maybe it went down to £200,000-a-week or £250,000-a-week.
“You’ve got to give credit to Aubemeyang for going and having the hunger to play. Other players would have stayed at Arsenal for the next few months.”
Just Arsenal Opinion
Auba truly did Arsenal a favour to have agreed to end his big-money deal early.
However, if it didn’t favour him, he wouldn’t have done it. As much as we would have paid him to stay on the bench, he would always prefer to play on the pitch.
He knew he wouldn’t get a chance to do that and proposed to leave the club.
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He might have become lethargic/disinterested for some reasons best known to him, but he never was a crook.
He didn’t leave the club for free, don’t worry about that.
Just curious about this:
Which and how many players have other clubs released or paid to leave in recent times? I can’t think of any other club doing this?
We’ve paid Chambers, Kolasinac, Aubameyang, Özil to leave.
Well said LC
If you google it you get your answer.
Sorry, answer meant for DaJuhi.