Robin van Persie has revealed that he could have stayed at Arsenal before his move to Manchester United but the club refused to offer him a new contract.
The Dutchman famously left the Emirates Stadium in 2012 and joined the Red Devils for a fee of around £24m.
Van Persie was the club captain at the time and ended the 2011/12 season as the Premier League's top goalscorer.
Understandably, the move went down poorly amongst the Gunners' faithful, but RVP has lifted the lid on the process behind leaving the club.
Van Persie has maintained that had the club offered him a new contract, with his current deal having only a year to run, and matched his ambitions to win a Premier League title he would have probably stayed at the Emirates.
Speaking to BT Sports ahead of Arsenal's fixture against Burnley, he said: "If Arsenal are not offering you a new deal, you can have different views about things.
"The fact is Arsenal didn't offer me a deal, what do you do then. So what do you do?
"You have a look around, I was ambitious, I still wanted to win the league. That is life.
"Basically, I ended up having three options. One option abroad disappeared quickly so it was City or United.
"What people don't know during a transfer or a marriage is behind the scenes there a lot of things fans don't see, loads of thing are happening. You have to make a choice based on what your targets are and deal with the facts.
"One of the main issues or facts is that possibly Arsenal got tired of me. For whatever reason, that was the starting point, they didn't offer me a new deal.
"We had loads of chats, chats with Wenger, with Gazidis, with my colleagues. It was part of the long process of actually leaving.
"During that process, we both disagreed on a couple of things, which doesn't matter, it happens in marriage as well.
"I just got the feeling that we would not come together. That was the moment I had to say, what are my options."
Van Persie went on to lift the Premier League title in his first season at Old Trafford, which turned out to be Sir Alex Ferguson's last season with United.
