‘Done him a favour’: Sam Allardyce claims he’d never have been allowed to sign 26-year-old for Arsenal

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Sam Allardyce says that Pep Guardiola has done Mikel Arteta a massive favour by selling him Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko.

Speaking on the No Tippy Tappy Football Podcast, Allardyce was speaking about the recruitment Arsenal have done from Manchester City this summer, and he says that if he was the manager of the Gunners, he never would’ve been allowed to sign Zinchenko or Jesus.

Allardyce is of the opinion that Guardiola has only sold these two players to Arteta because the pair are good friends, claiming that he wouldn’t have done the same for any other manager.

Pep’s favour to Arteta

Allardyce discussed these two signings.

“Pep has done him a favour with the players he’s sold him. I’m not sure if I was the manager of Arsenal and I asked him to sell me Jesus and Zinchenko he’d have said ‘alright Sam!’ Nobody wants to sell players to their rivals, certainly not those two. They’ve had a huge influence as well as the other signings,” Allardyce said.

Backfired

Arteta may have been the only manager Guardiola would have sold these two players to, but make no mistake about it, it won’t be happening again.

Indeed, Zinchenko and Jesus have completely turned the tide of this title race this term, and City’s decision to sell the pair to Arsenal has backfired massively.

Of course, it was hard to predict last season’s fifth-placed team becoming title contenders overnight, but that’s the transformative effect world class players can have on a squad like this.

Guardiola has made a big mistake in selling two star players to a rival, and we’re fairly sure he won’t be making the same mistake again.