Granit Xhaka's heartbreaking admission to Arteta when on brink of Arsenal exit

Granit Xhaka told Mikel Arteta that he no longer wanted to be booed by Arsenal fans and was ready to leave before the Spaniard convinced him to perform a dramatic U-turn and stay.

The Swiss midfielder left the Emirates Stadium earlier this year by joining Xabi Alonso's revolution at German side Bayer Leverkusen. His exit brought a roller-coaster seven-year spell at Arsenal to an end.

Xhaka had seen the club captaincy stripped from him after a tense showdown with Gunners supporters and looked set to leave the club. He had ambitions of leaving in 2019 when Arteta arrived but the Spaniard managed to convince him to stay after a truth-filled heart-to-heart.

As quoted by The Athletic, Xhaka said: "I had many black days, sitting in my hotel room for away games, realising what had happened... I was completely devastated.

“The club showed me little respect even though I was the captain. It was clear they wanted to get rid of me as quickly as possible, apart from one person: Mikel Arteta.

“When I met him for the first time, my bags were already packed and I was about to hop on a plane. With my heart and soul, I had already left the club. I said to him, ‘The solution is for me to go’. Mikel told me he wanted me to stay."

Opening up about the treatment he received from Arsenal fans, the midfielder added: “I could not imagine myself playing for Arsenal again. I said to him, ‘I just want to be somewhere where the fans don’t boo me’.

"But he was so convincing. For the first time in my life, I took a decision without talking to my family first. I got up and said, ‘OK, I’ll stay’. We embraced and, from that day on, I returned to training and it was like nothing ever happened.”

Xhaka’s decision to stay with the club proved to be a genius move