Crystal Palace star Wilfried Zaha has opened up on his failed move to Arsenal in 2019, with the Gunners making a move for Nicolas Pepe instead. Pepe, a fellow Ivory Coast international, ended up making the club-record transfer to the Emirates for £72million. The Crystal Palace talisman was on the verge of signing before the club chose otherwise, as revealed by the winger on Jamie Carragher’s The Greatest Game Podcast.
Wilfried Zaha said: “I had a conversation with the manager actually. [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’. The conversation was rather straightforward because I played against him when he was manager of Arsenal. He saw what I could do, saw my work-rate, and what I could add to the team. Obviously, it was up to the club who they chose and they chose Pepe over me.” It shows just how close things were to turning out differently for both clubs, though his nine goals and one assist in the Premier League suggests he could have carried that form over.
Whether it would have worked though will forever be a mystery, but it remains a big “what if?” moment for the club. However, he may have a chance to show the club what they missed out on when his Palace side host Arsenal on Monday.
