Robin Van Persie quit Arsenal in order to join rivals Manchester United, but despite firing his new side to success, the feeling just wasn’t right.
The Dutch striker left Arsenal in the summer of 2012 with only one year remaining on his current deal, and went onto score a huge 26 League goals for United that season, picking up his first ever Premier League title, while also earning back-to-back PL Golden Boots.
Arsenal fans were deservedly unhappy with the way in which he ditched our side to join our rivals, but the striker admits that he wasn’t able to enjoy getting the guard of honour from his former side after earning that title.
RVP told MUFC: “I didn’t like it. Some of them were my friends, I spent eight years there and I was just happy that it was over.
“I could see in their faces that they didn’t like it, which I get. And then you see me walking there, I was just happy that it was over.
“I think it’s a nice gesture to do towards the champions, but it just didn’t feel right, not for me and not for Arsenal.
“It was a little bit awkward there, so I didn’t feel really comfortable about that.
“From my point of view, it didn’t need to happen. Okay, it’s part of the rules and, from the basics, I did like it but not that particular day.”
Many Arsenal fans will always remember RVP as a ‘judas’ or a ‘traitor’, but one could argue that the club should have done more to convince him that we wanted to be challenging for titles, and were willing to make the investment in our squad to help put us there.
Has our club tried hard enough to get us back on top over the last decade? Can we really blame ambitious players for wanting to win things when our owners aren’t willing to match that ambition?
Patrick
In my opinion Van Persie wasn’t really a traitor and cannot be compared to Adebayor f.g. In that regard. Our current situation proves that he made the right decision and that we weren’t trying to compete at the top level and we were happy at the level we were in. Adebayor? Definitely a traitor and a scum bag.. Van Persie? Not at all
Van Persie wanted to know what we were doing as a club moving forward, who we were looking at to bring In to help with that but the board showed no ambition to challenge, so he left and Utd was the destination and to be fair he made the right call and won the title for Utd as we have continued to fall down to mid table.
Since the owners have been In charge the writing has been on the wall, Usmanov split as Stan was a nightmare and the man wanted to invest to the squad but nope we got the yanks. Robin saw it then and Arsene already knew but always did what’s best for the club. Top4 not so easy season after season to achieve….
Mikel has a chance to do something but is in a very similar situation with Aubameyang right now. We need to invest, the board womt show ambition and Auba is sold. Guaranteed.
I dont blame vp for leaving us. But i blame him for some of his comment, comments like: i heard a baby inside me crying man u.
So ungrateful and insulting