The Brazilian substantially struggled to reach his best level during his short-lived stint at the Emirates.
Willian has lifted the lid on his struggles at Arsenal by expressing that his spell at the club was the “most difficult time of his career.”
Willian made the move from Chelsea to their fierce rivals Arsenal on a free in the summer of 2020, signing a three-year contract with the Gunners.
He enjoyed a blistering start to life at his new club as he supplied a hat-trick of assists on his debut on the opening day of the previous campaign, but things only went downhill from there for the 33-year-old winger.
The Brazilian attacker’s form started dropping exponentially, leading to his eventual departure from the Emirates by the termination of his contract on mutual consent just 12 months later.
“I was not happy, that’s why I didn’t perform. I don’t want to go into the details, but I wasn’t happy,” the Corinthians man revealed on Rio Ferdinand’s YouTube channel FIVE.
“So, when I arrived there I was happy, from the beginning I was motivated, I wanted to do well, new club, new mates, new projects.
“After three months, I told my agent ‘please, I want to go’. I don’t want to speak bad about the club because it is a big club, has a big history in football, big players played there before it’s a big club – but it didn’t work, it was of course the most difficult time of my career.
“Yeah, it was big money that I gave up – money is not the most important thing in life, you need to be happy, to be getting pleasure and wake up and want to go to training,” he said.
“I wasn’t having that, so I said to myself, with my family and my wife ‘I cannot stay here, I am not happy here, I have to leave and find a way out to leave the club.’ For me, it is unfair to stay in a place you don’t want to stay just because of the money.”
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