The Red Devils were eager to get the England great, but he stayed loyal to the Gunners.
Tony Adams is considered among the greatest Arsenal players of all time. The former defender spent his entire career at the north London club, making 669 appearances for the Gunners.
Adams, who captained Arsenal for 14 years, has revealed he has been approached with transfer offers from Manchester United.
“The first [offer] was in 1990 and I was too young and too scared off the pitch,” Adams told Mirror.
“I was a completely different character on the pitch: I felt comfortable, I felt confident, I did my job.
“But off the pitch, I was scared to death, I didn’t know what to do, how to live and emotionally I wasn’t conscious. I know I was drinking too much.
“I felt that London was my home, and I couldn’t for the life of me have lived in Manchester. I turned him down and I turned down a pay increase of £15,000-a-year.”
In 1996 Adam finally recovered from his long-running alcohol addiction. Man United tried again to sign the then England international, but he decided to trust the club’s project under young Arsene Wenger.
“I went to Peter Hillwood, who was the chairman of the club, and was completely open with him about the offer,” Adams explained.
“I asked, ‘what’s the ambition of the club?’ You’d never hear of that today, a player speaking with the owner of the club and going, ‘hold on a minute, do we want to win the league or not, because if we don’t want to win the league, I’m out of here. I love the club, dearly. I don’t want to go anywhere but what are you doing?'”
He added: “My salary got trebled as well,” Adams said. “Let’s be honest – a trebled salary, we want to win the league and we have all these good players coming, so I said, ‘alright I will give it a roll, I’ll see what happens’.”
Adams won four English top-flight titles, three FA Cups, and two League Cups with the Gunners, cementing his place as one of the Premier League‘s greatest-ever players.
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