Arteta ‘really p**sed off’ Aubameyang with ‘knife in his back’ claim as Arsenal exit explained
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang says a “very refreshing” meeting with Mikel Arteta changed his mind over signing a new contract at Arsenal in September 2020.
Aubameyang ended speculation over his Arsenal future by penning a new long-term contract after lifting the FA Cup as captain a month earlier.
Aubameyang: I wanted to leave Arsenal in 2020
After signing a new deal, the Gabonese striker said he wanted to leave a “legacy” at the Emirates Stadium and has now revealed that he initially did not want to stay at the club.
It was a conversation with Arteta which swayed him, with the Spanish manager changing the player’s “vision”.
“I was talking on the bus with (fellow striker) Alexandre Lacazette,” Aubameyang told David Ornstein in an interview with The Athletic. “Every fan was saying, ‘Sign da ting!’. Laca asked me, ‘What are you going to do?’ I was like, ‘To tell you the truth, I really don’t know’.
“If I’m being honest, at that time I wanted to go.
“For me, it was time to find a new challenge. I did my time. It was very nice, but I needed to change. It had been four years, I did great and maybe it was time to leave it like this, proper and clean, so people remember me as a good Arsenal player. I felt I needed to go because if I stayed, something would go wrong.”
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Aubameyang continued: “He (Arteta) convinced me. He said, ‘I think you can leave a legacy’. I think it was the first time I heard this word in English.
“He said, ‘If you stay, you can be an icon, like the big names at Arsenal’. I started to change my vision. He and the fans convinced me to stay. But at first, I wanted to leave. This is where it got chaotic, because when you go against your heart, maybe this is where I made my mistake.”
Aubameyang says that personal problems changed his mentality on the pitch, however.
“I felt it progressively,” he said. “Slowly, slowly, I was kind of giving up. Sometimes there are things more important than football. Maybe people don’t realise, because they think football is the most important thing. (But) that is not true.”
Ex-Arsenal captain Aubameyang lifts lid on controversial Gunners exit
Aubameyang also explained his Arsenal exit and why he did not apologise for returning late following a sanctioned trip to collect his unwell mother from France.
He does admit that he could have left for London a day earlier but would never have apologised for the reason he was travelling.
“My mistake,” Aubameyang tells Ornstein. “I should have come back the night before, but I arrived in the morning. I didn’t tell them that I would miss the flight because I was preoccupied with my mum’s stuff (medical examinations).
“I went directly to a team meeting. Everything was normal. After that, he (Arteta) said, ‘Come with me’. This is where he started shouting. He said I could not do this because I was the captain and it was not acceptable.
“He said I gave him a knife in his back; I don’t know why he said that. I was really p**sed off because it was not true and he knew why I flew. He knew the reason and what was happening, he knew I was struggling that year. I was expecting help from him, not killing me like this.”
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He added: “When I’m late, (and) it’s my fault — no problem. I always said sorry. But in this case, I’ll never say sorry. For taking my mum from Laval (his hometown in France) to London? No.
“Even if I came a day late, I would never say sorry. You understand or you don’t. If not, don’t give a day off or tell people they cannot fly.”
Amazon’s All or Nothing documentary revealed that Arteta had a catalogue of “misdemeanours” from Aubayemang and that this was the last straw.
He was also late for a north London derby at home to Tottenham in March 2021 which resulted in his being excluded from the matchday squad. Aubayemang says this diminished trust between him and Arteta.
“You leave the car at the stadium, then take the bus to the hotel,” he said. “I didn’t miss the bus, they were waiting for me. There was a (traffic) accident near my home; maybe I should have set off earlier, but you don’t know what will happen. He was p***ed off as it’s a big game.
“When we got to the hotel, he called me to his room and said I wasn’t going to play. He was strict. The rules are the rules. I felt hurt. I had tears because I wanted to play that game, badly. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. The next day we had a meeting and I stood up in front of everyone to say sorry. He also came to my house to speak, because he didn’t want this to be chaos.
“I said, ‘It’s going to be OK’. But from then it was not the same.”
Aubameyang – now at Al Qadsiah in Saudi Arabia – adds that he received a “great message” from Arteta after his Arsenal exit and would now happily converse with his former manager.
The 35-year-old says he will “always love Arsenal, always love the supporters… even if I went to Chelsea” but gave a tongue in cheek response when asked what player Arsenal are missing in their quest for the silverware they “deserve”.
Asked which “goalscoring machine” they need, he responded: “Me”.
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