Henrikh Mkhitaryan has revealed that his move to AS Roma was as last minute as it seemed with the player not aware of the interest from Italy until after Sunday’s North London derby.
The Armenia international came off the bench for the final 23 minutes of the 2-2 draw with Sp*rs before he was contacted by representative Mino Raiola about the chance to spend the season in Serie A.
Not long after the end of the game he hopped on an aeroplane to the Italian capital.
“Everything happened in the last day right after the Tottenham game I got a call from my agent,” revealed the midfielder.
“He told me that I have to fly to Rome the next day to have a medical with the team and also sign a contract.
“It is a great opportunity for me as I didn’t get a lot of playing time.”
To make such an important decision so quickly suggests that a conversation about leaving must have taken place between Micki and Raiola during the summer and that it was always going to happen if the right offer came along.
That explains why he was subbed on instead of Reiss. Value of hindsight eh?
Also maybe a sign of disconnect between management and the head coach? They want to move him, Emery wants to use him. I feel like some cracks are potentially starting to show. Monreal maybe was another one–Emery probably didn’t want to sell him; he wanted him as a captain–and I can’t help but think there might be a difference in opinion on Xhaka, too.
To be honest this was best solution for everyone, he has been a strange player for us.
strange would be a fair adjective, yes.
Can’t imagine why you didn’t get lots of playing time Henrik. Could’ve been cos you’re shit? Just a thought.
Nah, I’d say your probably a shit footballer and Micky is a bloody good footballer with an excellent career. Sure he’s declined and Arsenal have moved on, Good luck Micky, but shit…nah…
I guess it’s just become “cool” to sit back and sling mud around.
Agree, he still is decent player maybe past the level of PL but certainly not shit.
Shite
Heavens praise thee holy Dave M, he of impeccable morals who stands above us all, never stooping to the level of us plebs, for he never criticizes anyone, he who’s farts smell of roses and who’se turds require hardly any wiping, the shiny white knight no one fucking asked for.
“cool”…
Isn’t Dave the guy who said we were getting our swag back…. before a hammering by Liverpool and a dodgy home draw against Sp*rs? Yeah, listen to that guy.
I remember that! Classic Dave.
He also manipulates his thumbs up and his ‘opponents’ thumbs down. It’s so obvious and he does it whenever he’s posting.
It would be annoying if it wasn’t so pathetic.
If u mean me? I stand by it. Dave Cee. I see an improvement
That’s right. Shit on the guy for showing kindness.
get a load of these White Knights.
A fan shows a bit of class in defending a player who on paper got a goal or assist every second game he played for the club and he get’s called a ‘white knight,’ whatever that means…
Yeah it’s his excellent performance record that’s why the club can’t wait to get shot of the guy…chist
He called an under-performing player shit, that’s hardly inaccurate. Not his fault if you’re the kind of melt who’se ever so delicate sensibilities can’t handle that level of “unbridled savagery”.
Being oversensitive about benign comments like that has nothing to do with class, it just makes you another one of those annoying, whiny, banal douchey value peacockers.
How many Arsenal goals or assists did he have between Bournemouth at home, in FEBRUARY, and the NLD this past Sunday?
ZERO
In that time, 26 weeks, he earned 5 million pounds, money we could be using for transfers. Hope that helps.
Fuck off. People just want to have a balanced conversation. I.ll be the 1st to say fuck you asshole. And I m a hypocrite. Sorry but ur post annoy me, goonero, child
Oh and u got a thumbs down from me
Heaven’s no not the thumbs!
Well..kind of dickish goonero. But i still laughed. Dicks can be pretty funny
Being a dick ain’t so bad. See, there’s three kinds of people: dicks, pussies, and assholes. Pussies think everyone can get along, and dicks just want to fuck all the time without thinking it through. But then you got your assholes. And all the assholes want us to shit all over everything! So, pussies may get mad at dicks once in a while, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes, And if they didn’t fuck the assholes, you know what you’d get? You’d get your dick and your pussy all covered in shit!
So which one are you?
Fair comment
Are you his dad or something? Spare me the self-righteousness. 200,000 POUND A WEEK he was getting paid for doing fuck all. Let that sink in. And he has the nerve to suggest he deserved more playing time.
What has happened to this page? ANY criticism of players or the club management and the “shocked, shocked!” handkerchief-droppers bursts out of the woodwork. Boring.
Praise the players who care and put in a shift (Jenko). Slate the players who don’t. Pretty sure it’s always been this way.
U had me until Jenko. I find it hard to praise any of them if they aren’t Henry or Bergkamp now
Wasn’t a fit for our needs? Sure. But he was a complete professional. He put in his shifts.
It’s really a poor mark to needlessly lash out at players as they’re leaving. It’s not a good look for anyone.
Dave m and all you who thumbed him up are fucking flakes and thumb up whores, my goodness he was widely accepted as shit for ages by pretty much everyone on here an now your all sucking the mikhy…goonero you are correct but whoever done the pussy dick asshole comment sucks an that was pure shit from your asshole
Ah, precisely the enlightened, stimulating dialogue I come here for.
Mino Raiola, Mikis agent is rolling in it! He just moves his players around wether their clubs want them or not… must be nice lol
Guy is a class A dickhead. Selfish prick
I really hoped he was going to be a player for us. Never mind.
Hope he rediscovers something close to his Dortmund form in Italy.
Honestly I don.t care. That swap was enough reason for Wenger to go . Terrible decision. Raiola screwed us
Raiola screwed us bc Mslintat allowed it.
Obviously no one from Roma watched Mickeys cameo against the Spuds or they’d have had a last minute change of heart… He’s a strange player. Capable of being sublime and useless at the same time. Anyway, good luck to him.
With the Italian Law91 coming into effect in January 1st, we can expect this tax break which facilitated so many Italian clubs taking high wage earners on loan to increase. Perhaps that is the time we can expect Mustafi to follow suit to Roma or another club.
I’m liking this no dilly-dallying approach to transfers we are doing now
I’ve read that players must sign 24 month contract to be eligible so won’t take affect for players on season long loans, and if they’re covering the existing wage a loan it will only benefit the player anyway. Where it will make a difference is on Italian clubs ability to attract players to Serie A on permanent deals.
I’ve read that players must sign 24 month contract to be eligible so won’t take affect for players on season long loans, and if they’re covering the existing wage it will only benefit the player anyway. Where it will make a difference is on Italian clubs ability to attract players to Serie A on permanent deals.
Its no different than any other season except we have got rid of some players for free bc we have allowed their contracts to wind down – Ramsey, Welbeck.
Others have retired (rightly) Koscielny, Cech.
Others we wasted money on Lichsteiner, Mhkiatryan (when we had priorities in more important positions to fill)
Then the likes of Jenkinson, Elneny, Asano peripherals we should have culled ages ago frankly.
So we haven’t done that particularly different.
We failed to offload Mustafi and Ozil.
Thereby we had to sell one of our better assets in Iwobi.
Its not that different.
Italy is a proper destination for xhaka as well. Slow, so you don’t have to worry about brianfarts, and he can use his left foot to good use
I hope that Mkhitarayan has an absolutely stellar season at Roma and we get a fee for him next summer…
Given that we were very interested in signing him before he went to United, I wonder if he would have been better for us at the stage? He had just come off a stellar season at that point. Mourinho seems to have a knack for ruining some footballers.
He does look shorn of confidence when he plays
And we went and signed Lucas Perez instead ?
We should have signed Mahrez two Januarys ago.
He was want away at Leicester for maybe 40m (before bargaining)
Preferred move was to a London club.
We needed the wide player to balance out Iwobi on the left.
Instead we got Mhkitaryan courtesy of Mslintat being prey to Raiolla bc he refused a marginally lower offer from City (not our rivals anyway) and was held hostage to the only remaining bidder in United.
Amateurish if you ask me and somewhat clueless of our actual tactical needs.
He did not do Wenger ANY favours the (over rated) German.
I would have agreed before watching Mourinho speak. But now he is just overatted and not good enough for EPL or Arsenal
If I recall we was doing well at Manu before getting injured. When he came back, Jose or not, he did not play very well, and went to the bench. Yes, if we had gotten him back (or he returned to his level of play) during his Dortmund days, we would have had Mickey at his best. He,Kagawa, Reus, ad Auba tore up the Bundesliga.
Maybe it would have made a difference but Mkhi is “meeky” nowadays. Shadow of his former self anf also doesn’t help himself by playing it safe
On another note, Auba is not even part of fifa 11 shortlist…
I saw it, pure shambles. Still lost for words.
Mhiki ain’t shyt for a player…down vote all you want but it’s high time we start saying it as it is. He says he didn’t get play time like he should have but didn’t, when in actual fact he got play time as much as being fit would let him (he was always shoehorned into the right of midfield just so the team could accommodate him by both wenger n Unai. ?
He’s not a poor player by any means. BUT : 1) When we got him (for whatever inexplicable reason of Mslintat), he was a waning force out wide when we really needed a winger like Mahrez. 2) We already had 2 other players in Ramsey and Ozil who could provide similar function through the middle(plus emerging Smith-Rowe) 3) He has since (partially through lack of games) been erratic with shooting/finishing. His passing game and reading is still good. Will be useful to other teams in europe and at 30yrs, maybe another 4 seasons in a slightly less frantic league. At… Read more »
A voice of reason, cheers
well kinda glad we didnt get raiola now
Who we needed to get if we had any sense of ambition like Lille OSC was Luiz Campos.
He’s still doing the business this season now unearthing Victor Osimhen the Nigerian from lowly Charleroi.
He has proven time and again ability to rebuild squads with frugal means and stretch the budget.
We had mixed results this summer.
72m for pepe good intent but expensive given range of wide players available for less and 27m for Saliba a big risk given 19 senior games only. Less so 8m for a band aid from Chelsea given Squillaci.
Just reading between the lines… could the last-minuteness of the Mikhi loan deal imply that we’d been in serious discussions with some European club about an Ozil loan? Ozil negotiations breaking down meant Mikhi deal was required…
Both could fuck off in my opinion. Better Ozil in truth
Stupid thinking as usual.
Why lose Ozil as well?
He is a great asset to have particularly since we have now restructured the wage bill where Mslintat and Raul had previously mired us into the panic loan era.
Against deep packed defenses where we have dominance in possession and control, Ozil is the perfect orchestrator to break down line or find the now fast wide assets in Nelson, Auba or Pepe quickly on the counter.
Short sighted thinking…if any. All due respects.
A strange player. Normally, you can name one or two outstanding attributes a player has. As poor as Mustafi is, he’s physically a beast. As poor as Xhaka is, he has excellent passing range and a strong shot. But with Mkhi, well I’m not sure what he excells in. You’d think passing and creativity but certainly not on the basis of his spell here. You might think speed and dribbling but again, no he’s not exceptional there in anyway either. Goalscoring and composure? Nope try again. Work effort and discipline? Perhaps but that relegates him to the Lingard/Kuyt pile. Perhaps… Read more »
Did Mhkitaryan say he didn’t get enough playing time?????……yeah that sums it up
As expected. I felt we would try to sell him. We have 3 players in similar function for a while. Before this summer, we had Ramsey, Ozil AND Mhkitaryan. The Armenian was inexplicably brought in by Mslintat. We were unbalanced with most of the productivity coming in from the left and over reliance on a then emerging and relatively erratic Bellerin (Critics of AMN take note) Yet instead of selling Alexis to City and spending on Mahrez before City came in late on to hike the price up into the stratosphere, we brought in the waning Armenian winger who had… Read more »
Do you ever post anything other than
1. It’s never actually Mustafi’s fault
2. We should have bought Mahrez
3. Sven is the world’s worst scout bc we got Miki/ Lichtensteiner nevermind all the signings such as Gendouzi, Leno, Auba who have been pretty solid
The other thought I had on Mhkitaryan was that he may have been useful as a make weight for a deal for a better Cback than the band aid option we brought in from Chelsea. We were in pursuit of Upamecano but the German club was recalcitrant with a high price. Felt we could have been more aggressive thrown Mavropanos their way on loan (with option to buy if they needed) and maybe Mhkitaryan as well on a permanent deal (Liepzig could do with creative help) to offset price on the Cback. We spent instead 25m on Tierney (a good… Read more »
Mino, if only you’d told me, I’d have taken Mikhi to the airport.
Hope we see Smith-Rowe get some time this season. He’s having injury issues. BUT amidst the flavour of the month hype on other young players (not undeserving) in Willock, Guendouzi, we have a very promising pair in Nelson and Smith-Rowe as well. Where ESR will play is a question. Cebellos and Ozil likely to take first pick of the number 10 role, Cebellos also with function deeper or left of an inverted 3 in the middle. We are slightly short on wide options with Auba an asset but since we only have him and Laca as senior players on top… Read more »
Micki always seemed like a confidence player who really needed an arm around the shoulder…probably why he did so well under klopp. I didn’t mind the swap deal at the time, as Sanchez was about to leave for free, micki was better than nothing? I always liked the way he TRIED to play. Best of luck to him at Roma.
Can we just for once not be shitty about a player who may not have been at his peak or lived up to expectation but also did nothing wrong in terms of professionalism and general behaviour?
Too late…
This definitely is a real change for Arsenal in letting so many veteran players go so late in the window with no real replacements brought in for them at the time. Of course we brought the players in earlier with Ceballos, Pepe and Martinelli and have been giving starts already to Willock and Nelson. I do like the fact that we are giving so many young players (those mentioned above plus Guendouzi, Chambers, the pick up of Tierney, etc.) a chance, but still seems odd that Ozil remains yet hasn’t played yet this year and doesn’t seem to be in… Read more »