Gabriel Jesus arrived at Barcelona on deadline day with a grievance still fresh, telling anyone who asked that nobody at Arsenal had said “anything” to him while he was being made to train away from the first-team group. Ten days on, Mikel Arteta has finally given his side of it — and the Arsenal manager says he is baffled by the whole thing.
Speaking to reporters in London, Arteta declared himself “very surprised” by the noise around the exits of Jesus, Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli, all of whom left the Premier League champions this summer. Arsenal legend Ian Wright had been among those questioning how the three departures were handled. Arteta’s account, as relayed by Mundo Deportivo, is that the conversations happened, and that they were warm.
What Arteta said about the Gabriel Jesus exit
“To be honest, especially with ‘Gabi’ I had a one-on-one chat in the dressing room,” the Arsenal boss said, before conceding that two people can walk out of the same conversation with two different memories of it.
He did not, though, retreat from the decision itself. “The words we exchanged were all of gratitude,” he added, “but if someone has to be the bad cop, I’ll be it and I understand that.”
It is a revealing line, and a fair one. A manager holding a squad together has to tell players things they do not want to hear, and the player on the receiving end rarely files it away as a friendly chat. Arteta seems content to wear that.
He also left the door open on the relationship itself, drawing on the number of players he has moved on across seven years at the Emirates. “With other players who left at some point the relationship has improved a lot,” he said. “I hope that’s the case here too.”
Why it looked different from the Brazilian’s side
Jesus had spent the closing weeks of his Arsenal career on the outside of it. Having missed most of the previous campaign with a serious knee injury, the 29-year-old was training apart from the group while the club worked to move him on, and he made no secret of how isolating he found that once he had signed for the Blaugrana.
Both versions can be true at once. Arteta remembers a private conversation built on thanks for four years of service; Jesus remembers turning up every morning to train alone, waiting on a phone call about his future. Clubs are rarely as clear with players as they believe they are being, and a squad member who has been quietly reclassified as surplus tends to work that out from the timetable rather than from a meeting.
Barcelona were the beneficiaries
Whatever the truth of the Arsenal end of it, the Catalans have no complaints. Barcelona had chased Julian Alvarez all summer, been rebuffed by Atletico Madrid, and reached 2 September without the centre-forward Hansi Flick had asked for. Jesus arrived late, took the vacant No.9 shirt and signed a contract that runs to 2029.
He then did the one thing that shortens any settling-in period: he scored on his debut, marking his first Barcelona appearance with a goal in the 5-1 win over Feyenoord in the Champions League.
For a player who spent August being told, in effect, that he was no longer needed, that was a useful evening’s work. Raphinha remains Flick’s most productive route to goal in this system, and Jesus will not simply be handed a starting place because of the number on his back. But he is inside a dressing room that wanted him, in a squad that scored 22 goals in its opening five matches of the season, and he is training with everybody else.
Arteta says he hopes the relationship recovers in time. It probably will. Nothing softens a grudge quite like the club you joined being top of the scoring charts in Europe.
