Ashley Cole says being ‘disrespected’ and ‘shafted’ by Arsenal during contract negotiations pushed him to join Premier League rivals Chelsea.
Cole had established himself as one of the best players in the league and an England regular when he made the controversial switch from Arsenal to Chelsea in 2006.
After coming through Arsenal’s academy, Cole made over 200 first-team appearances for his boyhood club, lifting two Premier League trophies and three FA Cups.
Arsenal wanted Cole to extend his stay at the club but the defender says he was ‘shafted’ after being offered a less lucrative contract than he was ‘promised’.
Cole felt ‘disrespected’ by the Gunners and as a result joined Chelsea on a contract worth more than £100,000-a-week.
Arsenal fans never forgave Cole for leaving, waving fake £20 notes at him during the following season and dubbing him ‘Cashley’.
Cole ‘understands’ the frustration from Arsenal fans but says they ‘never knew the full facts’, claiming he was ‘shafted’ by the team he grew up supporting.
‘My situation was I knew what I was worth,’ Cole said on That Peter Crouch Podcast. ‘If you don’t want to pay it, no problem.
‘But we did agree to pay it. Everything was agreed and then they pulled the rug [from] under me. They broke their promise – I couldn’t tell you why.
‘It was hard [to leave]. People [don’t] understand the pressure that I was under to leave or to stay.
‘Ultimately I felt disrespected, this is my point of view, I felt disrespected.
‘It is what it is, but sometimes when I speak to fans [and they say], “You left, you hurt me”, I’m like, “Hold up”. People don’t realise that I was the one who got hurt the most.
‘That was my boyhood club, I’d been living the dream. But I got shafted.
‘It wasn’t that I felt I wasn’t getting looked after because I was a young player. I didn’t ask for [Thierry] Henry’s or [Patrick] Vieira’s [wages]. I didn’t want that.
‘I was nothing to do with them. I just knew what I was worth and they broke their promise.
‘I look back and I was bitter. In my head I was going, “You put me through some s***”. And they just went like, “Ash, you deal with it, and it’s nothing to do with us.”
‘I think [former Arsenal vice-chairman] David Dein came out and mentioned something recently. But it took him like 20 years.
‘For 20 years I got abused. But I don’t blame the fans. I understand their frustration. They didn’t know the full facts, they didn’t know the truth.’
After his acrimonious departure from Arsenal, Cole went on to enjoy even more success at Chelsea, helping the Blues win another Premier League trophy, four more FA Cups, the Europa League and the Champions League.
The former left-back, now 44, is viewed as one of the best defenders of his generation and was named in the Premier League Team of the Year four times between 2003 and 2011.
Cole earned more than 100 caps for England and was recently appointed as a full-time coach at the FA, working with the youth teams at St. George’s Park.
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