West Brom midfielder Gareth Barry has revealed that Arsenal tried to sign him on two occasions, as the veteran prepares to take on the Gunners on Monday.

Barry is likely to play a part in the game, and if so he will achieve his 633rd top-flight appearance, surpassing legend Ryan Giggs’ record. The midfielder has been one of the Premier League’s best during his career, playing for Aston Villa, Manchester City, Everton and now West Brom.

However, the tough tackling midfielder has admitted he had been close to joining Arsenal on two separate occasions, once when he left Aston Villa to join Manchester City in 2009, and the other when he left City to join Everton five years later.

“There were a couple of conversations with representatives and Arsene that he was interested,” Barry said.

“Before I was leaving Villa and when I was leaving Man City to go to Everton there was a bit of interest too.”

“But it didn’t materialise. I’ve got massive respect for Arsene Wenger for what he’s done for the English game and it would have been good to work under him, but that didn’t happen.”

“He deserves credit because he was ahead of the game back then. If you speak to people who worked with him in the late 1990s, he was seeing things and doing things that other managers in England weren’t.”

Barry admitted that choosing not to join Arsenal was a decision he made in order to have more game time.

“Part of me thought, ‘This was going to be the easier way to end your career’,” he added.

“There’s less pressure on you, you’re not going to be starting games and less expected of you.”

“But the other part of me thought, ‘It’s going to be too easy going down that road – come to West Brom for another challenge’.”

“It might be harder, a tougher challenge, but I didn’t want to slowly go down that road of fizzling out.”
[Quotes via Sky Sports]