I cried on drive to Chelsea as I didn't want to go – Arsenal came in for me first
Shaun Wright-Phillips has revealed he was reduced to tears after being shipped off to Chelsea from Manchester City.
Wright-Phillips – son of Arsenal icon Ian Wright – started out at the City of Manchester Stadium (now the Etihad) and quickly became a first-team staple. But after establishing himself at City and gaining a foothold in the England team, he was informed he'd be moving to Stamford Bridge in the summer of 2005.
It later came to light that Arsenal were in the hunt for Wright-Phillips, 43, whose exit was necessary in order to City to balance their books. However, his dad's old side weren't ready to make their lunge for the player when Chelsea swooped in with a £21million offer City couldn't turn down.
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"It’s weird. I loved my time there [at City], loved the fans, but it wasn’t something that I anticipated or wanted to happen," he told host David Seaman on the Seaman Says podcast, via Betway. "I was a naïve kid that just thought I was happy at City and would play there for the rest of my life. I didn’t think about winning the Premier League, I just enjoyed playing football.
"City were going into administration, which I didn’t know. When they first asked me, I said, 'no I’m fine, I’m happy where I am'. The first conversation that came in was that Arsenal were interested in buying me. I just carried on playing football, then they said they didn’t want me until January. It didn’t bother me because I wasn’t thinking about moving. My heart was set on staying at City. I took it as a compliment and just wanted to get better and better.
"Then Chelsea came in and they just said the deal had been accepted. The next thing I know there’s a car waiting outside for me to take me to London for the medical. I got in the car and I was crying because I didn’t want to leave. I only found out four to six months after that they had to sell me or the club would have gone into administration."
The move didn't work out too badly for Wright-Phillips, who won the Premier League in a slow individual first season at Chelsea. He followed that up with an FA Cup title the following year and made a total of 125 appearances for the west Londoners before returning to City in 2008.
As for Arsenal, the Gunners did invest in a young English winger in the summer of 2005. Southampton product Theo Walcott got the nod as their future investment, with the speedster becoming a success in his own right at the Emirates Stadium.
There's no telling the direction Wright-Phillips' career might have moved in had he not joined Chelsea. The winger joined City from Nottingham Forest's academy in 1999 and quickly became enamoured with Manchester, where he hoped to spend his entire career.
The Wright dynasty lives on through his son, D'Margio, who is a winger at Belgian club Beerschot after coming through the system at Stoke City. The 23-year-old started his career at City and spent six years in the club's academy, but he too was shipped off when the time came.
