Jack Wilshere has explained how the departure of big stars damaged Arsenal's ambition during his time at the club.
Wilshere became a prominent figure in the Arsenal first team for the first time in the 2010-11 season, the last campaign in which the Gunners mounted a legitimate title challenge.
However, captain Cesc Fabregas left for Barcelona that summer, fellow top stars Samir Nasri and Robin van Persie quickly following suit, joining Manchester City and Manchester United respectively.
Asked whether Fabregas' exit had a detrimental impact in the Arsenal dressing room, Wilshere told The Lockdown Tactics podcast: 'Yeah it did. The big players like Robin and Nasri were asking the question like "why is he going, we think we're supposed to be challenging for the Premier League".
'Why is our best player and our captain leaving? Then you see obviously Nasri went to City and I got on really well with Samir and I remember having a conversation with him and he was saying what City are building, it’s hard not to want to be a part of that.
'I could understand where he was coming from but at the same time it hurt because he was so good for us.
'He was going to be one of the reasons why we'd improve and start challenging. I'd always think back to that first season and when we came so close and thinking what would've happened.
'Would Cesc have stayed, attracted bigger players challenged in the Champions League? But year after year players left.'
'I saw it over when I first started to the expectation dropping even from then,' Wilshere added. 'From the first season challenging for the Premier League to then challenging for the top four was what we were going for.'
Wilshere's time at the Emirates came to an end when his deal expired in July 2018, the midfielder joining West Ham on a three-year contract. He left with two FA Cup winner's medals.
Andy_Mac
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The top clubs find a way to keep their best players consistently enough. Arsenal failed to do so in recent years because they had already started losing ambition long ago from the time when Kroenke got a major share in the ownership of the club. As we all know, he prioritised on monetary profits over the success of the club. Even the people working under him aren't getting the job done and Kroenke isn't too bothered as long as there's a lot of income coming his way. The transfer activity has been so questionable as well as contract negotiations. It's an absolute mess right now and it will require a lot of work to fix it. Maybe a couple of successful transfer windows to fix it. I don't know much about Arsenal's board of directors but some people's jobs ought to be on the line for some of the recent transfer business. You'd wonder sometimes whether they're trying to sabotage the club. Maybe it's to get Kroenke losses so that he would leave the club, I don't know 😂