Carl Jenkinson has claimed that Unai Emery taking him on Arsenal's pre-season tour before he left the club showed him how genuine the Spaniard is.
The English defender spent eight seasons at the Gunners, going on loan to the likes of West Ham and Birmingham City. In his final year in north London in 2019, Jenkinson said that Emery admitted the right-back wasn't in his plans for the following season so he could accept transfers with other clubs.
Speaking on the Fozcast with former English goalkeeper Ben Foster, Jenkinson discussed the issues of pre-season for departing players and how Emery made the best decision for him when leaving Arsenal.
The now-32-year-old said: "In pre-season, it's a time where you're playing games and players can be watched, you know, and if players like - it happens a lot in pre-season, managers will go 'Oh you're not in my squad, I don't want you'.
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"Pre-season games are a shop window as well, so if a player has actually been left behind and then no-one sees them throughout pre-season, it makes it, they'll think 'Oh, you're forcing me out', it's actually making it even harder for them to find a club.
"I always remember towards the end of my time at Arsenal, I knew that I needed to find a solution because I wasn't going to play much and the writing was kind of on the wall.
"We were going away for preseason, and it was under Unai Emery, and I think I actually went into his office, like on the first day back for preseason. I said like - because we had had a conversation at the end of the season before - and he said 'Look I'll be honest, you're not going to play much for me this season'. So I said 'Okay, cool', do you know what I mean, I'll look for another club, I appreciate your honesty.
"So I went in and I said 'Unai, I could really do with coming on this preseason', he might have been like taking me anyway, but I just wanted to let him know, because as I said it's a shop window for me, it's a time for me to show what I can do for other clubs who will be watching.
"He said 'Oh, don't worry, yeah, you're coming on the tour'. I went on the tour, we played Real Madrid in America. I wasn't starting, I think Ainsley Maitland-Niles had like a back spasm or something just before kick-off, so I got drafted in.
"I had a worldie game, played really, really well and then all of a sudden a phone call started ringing, my agent saying like 'Oh you know mate, you were unreal last night' and then I moved on [from Arsenal]. So, that situation was a prime example of actually, clubs just going 'Go and train on your own', it's not helping anyone."
Jenkinson would go to join Nottingham Forest in a deal worth £1.8million, before going on loan to Melbourne City and eventually joining A-League side Newcastle United Jets in 2022. He is currently without a club after his contract with the Jets ran down.
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