Sometimes it’s not clear if a player will be allowed to stay permanently at their loan club once the season comes to an end, so throwing some shade at your main employer sounds like a good way to force a move.
In truth, it’s hard to say that Henrikh Mkhitaryan has a long term future at Arsenal, but he’s been doing well for Roma and a report from Football Italia does suggest he wants to stay there after this season.
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It might just be the case that he wanted to show some appreciation for his current boss Paulo Fonseca, but he throws Unai Emery under the bus in the process.
Speaking about his time in Rome he said the following:
“When I was at Arsenal, I had different things asked from me by the coach, people were expecting different things from here,”
“The philosophy of Emery was different from Fonseca, but here I’m feeling much better because we’re playing better football and I think it matched me.”
“I prefer Fonseca’s football because we’re playing very offensively, we’re trying to have the ball all the time here and of course I like this kind of game.”
In many ways it does make sense, under Emery it never looked like Arsenal had a plan or a clear philosophy, and that showed in the inconsistent results and performances.
At this point it’s not clear if Roma have an option to sign him at the end of the season, but it certainly sounds like he’s willing to stay if they want him.