Whisper it quietly but Unai Emery was right all along. At least when it came to one Arsenal transfer move. He may have been wrong about a number of other things and the Gunners are certainly reaping the rewards of his full-time replacement Mikel Arteta being in charge now.
Arsenal are the only team in the Premier League with a 100% record after three games and sit top of the pile. They have spent big to get there, splashing out in excess of £150million last summer and then paying out more than £110million this time around, with more to potentially spend on incomings before the transfer window shuts next week.
The Gunners have brought in five new players in Oleksandr Zinchenko, Gabriel Jesus, Marquinhos, Matt Turner and Fabio Vieira, while the likes of Pedro Neto and Youri Tielemans have been tipped to make the move to the Emirates Stadium as well. But there is another name being linked with a move to north London and it's a name that was previously linked with Arsenal.
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Wilfried Zaha has been heavily linked with a move to the Emirates Stadium on more than one occasion in the past. And the Ivorian came close to joining in 2019 and would have done if former boss Emery had had his way.
Instead, Arsenal signed Zaha's countryman Nicolas Pepe - who has failed to set the Premier League alight and looks set to leave Arsenal on loan before the transfer window closes. That would be some come down for Pepe, who joined the Gunners in a club-record £72million deal in 2019.
Emery wanted Zaha then and revealed exclusively to football.london why in 2021 . He said: "I usually want to sign first the players I know there. When we played against Crystal Palace, Zaha showed he was a very good player.
"I also think Nicolas Pepe is a very good player. When you make the decision you have to decide how easy the adaption will be of some players. I was thinking the adaption was easier for Zaha because he was playing in the Premier League and you didn’t know exactly how fast Nicolas Pepe can adapt to the Premier League because I know you can need some time to adapt. I was thinking at this time that the adaption of Zaha was probably easier and faster than Pepe."
That has proved to be the case, with Pepe struggling to adapt to life in the Premier League. Pepe looks set to join Nice on loan this summer and Zaha could finally come in.
Neto emerged as the 'secret winger' that Arsenal had been talking to, but Zaha remains in their thinking three years after Emery wanted to bring him in. Speaking in 2021 about the missed Arsenal move, Zaha told the Greatest Game Podcast: "I had a conversation with the manager. [Unai] Emery was just like, 'We don't really need to go through much'. He said he'd seen me play, he knows I can change games at any time and stuff like that. He was like, 'Yeah we'd love to have you' and I was just like, 'Yeah I'd love to come'."
If Arsenal were to sign Zaha instead of Neto in the final days of the transfer window, it would be like holding up their hands to Emery and saying 'you were right'.
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