Jack Wilshere has opened up on how Arsene Wenger advised him to leave Arsenal for the good of his career.
Wilshere joined Arsenal at the age of nine and rose through the academy ranks before making his first-team debut in September 2008.
The midfielder was sent on a season-long loan to Bournemouth in 2016 to help get his career back on track.
But a serious calf injury ruled him out of the final few months of Bournemouth’s campaign.
‘I’d got injured and stepped away from football for a little bit to take my mind off things,’ Wilshere, now in his second season with West Ham, told Arsenal’s ‘In Lockdown’ podcast.
‘I’d got married and gone on my honeymoon. When I came back I still wasn’t with the team, I was still training on my own, doing my rehab.
‘I remember one afternoon I was sitting in the gym on a bike and Arsene just came and sat next to me and we had a really honest conversation. He said, “Look, this is your last year, the club aren’t going to offer you a new deal. If you find a club who is going to give you a long term deal, if I was you I would go.”
‘At the time I was still injured and nothing really came up. I was considering everything. Once I realised that I wasn’t going to leave, that I was going to stay for another year, I looked around the midfield and thought to myself, “If I get myself really fit and I’ve got a manager who trusts me, who backs me, who knows my ability and if I can prove my fitness to him, I think I can get in this team”, and I did.
‘The team didn’t really do well in the league, they started badly. I played a few Under-23 games and then got into the Europa League squad. I played a few of those games, I played well.
‘Then as I thought, Arsene showed faith in me and I played and I managed to play quite a lot of games that season. It was quite a good season.’
Jack Wilshere has moved on to join city London rival West Ham in 2018.
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