Cesc Fabregas had a chance to join Chelsea or Arsenal when he left Barcelona back in 2014 and it was the Gunners who had first dibs on him.
So why did Wenger not sign him? Here is the reason explained by the man himself.
In an interview with The Athletic, Wenger said: ‘It was general guidance for me to make the players realise that if you leave here, you don’t come back.
‘It was a way to retain the players who wanted to see if the grass was greener elsewhere. ‘I did it for Thierry Henry, Sol Campbell, Jens Lehmann but they were different. ‘The young players who left I didn’t like to do it.’
Wenger also spoke about how he signed Welbeck from Tottenham Hotspur.
‘At the airport I was told he was signing for Tottenham and I managed to intercept him,’ said Wenger. ‘It was a funny story because I was negotiating all day. ‘We had Ivan [Gazidis] and Dick Law to negotiate and they called me up and I had the agent on the phone. ‘And I told him, ‘Look, I have to hang up because I’m in front of the Pope’.
He said to me, ‘What?’. I said ‘Yes’, because we were queuing to have a photo with the Pope in a private audience, and I was at the back of the queue because I had to talk and negotiate. ‘I arrived in front of the Pope and I had to say, ‘Look, that’s not possible anymore. I will meet the Pope now’.’
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