Mathieu Debuchy left Arsenal and moved to Ligue I side St. Etienne on a free transfer during the January window that just completed. Although Debuchy is now back in his home country, he’s still preoccupied with the transfer opportunity that didn’t happen.
Debuchy could have moved to a way bigger club, and he called out his former manager Arsene Wenger for blocking the deal.
“I would have liked to have left Arsenal earlier and to have played for a different club,” Debuchy said in an interview with RMC Sport.
“There were moments when I was angry with the manager. I had an opportunity, on loan at Manchester United, that he refused me because he did not want to strengthen a direct competitor at the time.”
You can sort of understand where Wenger was coming from in his refusal to allow his fellow countryman’s move to go through. Big six sides typically do not like to sell players to rival big six clubs. However, that rationale for stopping the Debuchy move is blown out of the water when you consider that the Alexis Sanchez-Henrikh Mkhitaryan swap deal happened during the very same transfer window.
Also, these days players are so used to getting their way when it comes to transfers, usually holding most of the power in a majority of situations that you can understand why Debuchy was so shocked he didn’t get his way.
It’s still a bit unclear how much Debuchy would have truly strengthened United this season anyway. He hadn’t seen a minute of Premier League action at Arsenal, so he wasn’t exactly going to be regular first team selection material at United, had the move gone though.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune corporation blogging community Chicago Now.
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