Raymond Verheijen: Robin van Persie wouldn't have joined Manchester United if he had known about Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement

Robin van Persie

Raymond Verheijen has suggested that Robin Van Persie would never have joined Manchester United if he had know that Sir Alex Ferguson was set to retire in a year’s time. Yesterday, reports suggested that David Moyes could be willing to offload the striker. While the Dutchman also argued Van Persie had to leave Arsenal as they have no chance of winning a trophy.

Van Persie joined United in a sensational £24million from Arsenal in the summer of 2012 and won the Premier League title in his first season at Old Trafford, only for Ferguson to decide to retire at the end of that campaign.

And the Dutch coach has suggested that if he was aware of Ferguson’s intent to leave his post after just one year, he would have considered other options instead.

Verheijen told FourFourTwo, “Robin isn’t stupid, he knows how late in his career it is.

“For years he was at Arsenal winning nothing and then he made his move to Manchester United so at least he could win some things in his career because he was already in his late 20s.

“He had a lot of loyalty to Arsenal and it was difficult for him – it was a painful move. Ideally he would have finished his career at Arsenal, winning trophies.

“He knew that wasn’t going t happen, so he had to make that move. He made a painful but brilliant move. He had a very successful first year, wins the title and thinks, “let’s go for the Champions League.”

“Then all of a sudden, Ferguson retires. How do you think he felt? if he had known that was going to happen he would have still left Arsenal because staying there would mean zero trophies. He definitely would have moved, but would have more than likely joined Barcelona or Bayern Munich.”