Willian admits chasing Arsenal's £220k-a-week deal left him unhappy and wanting out within three months

Willian has admitted that the £220,000-a-week contract that lured him from Chelsea to Arsenal in the summer of 2020 ultimately left him miserable, telling a podcast he asked to leave within three months of arriving and has since accepted the move was a mistake.

Speaking to former Chelsea team-mate John Obi Mikel on The Obi One Podcast, the Brazilian winger described how Mikel Arteta personally courted him with promises of a central role at the club. “Arteta said to me: ‘We’re going to play like this and I want you to be the main guy, I will build the team around you, I want to give you the key to the club’,” Willian recalled.

Those assurances proved decisive. Willian’s contract at Stamford Bridge had expired and Chelsea were unwilling to match Arsenal’s three-year offer. At 32, with his family settled in London, the deal appeared straightforward. “To be honest I should have stayed,” he said, “but at that moment I was thinking maybe the best solution is to go there.”

The reality at Arsenal fell short of what he had been told. “When you heard a lot of things and then you join the club, things that are not the same as what they told me, I got frustrated straight away,” he said. “Three months later I said to my agent I want to leave, and that I made a big mistake leaving Chelsea.”

When pressed on whether specific promises were broken, Willian was careful but clear. “It was more due to what I heard. I got frustrated from that because when I was there I saw some situations that I said to myself, it’s not going to change.”

He managed one goal and seven assists in 37 appearances across the 2020/21 season — a campaign in which Arsenal finished eighth in the Premier League — before departing for his boyhood club Corinthians in Brazil after just one year of his three-year deal.

“Because of that I couldn’t play well or perform because I wasn’t happy,” Willian said. “When you are not happy you cannot perform. Money cannot buy happiness. It was the best contract of my life there, but I wasn’t happy.”

The comments offer a candid window into the early turbulence of Arteta’s tenure at Arsenal, a period far removed from the club’s first Premier League title in 22 years that followed in the seasons since.