Top 5 Arsenal players who left on a free transfer
Over the years, Arsenal have been quite famous (or infamous) for their exploits in the transfer market, wherein the club has signed off on some questionable deals. Though they’ve also gotten hold of the likes of Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang recently, they also somehow signed Andre Santos and Yossi Benayoun, a few years ago.
To put things into perspective, the Gunners once acquired Kim Kallstrom, when the Swede was nursing a broken back, meaning that the midfielder only featured on a handful of occasions before eventually bidding adieu.
Apart from the rather uninspiring signings, Arsenal have also shipped off multiple players, despite those footballers seemingly at the peak of their powers.
And, while the payment of their stadium debt didn’t help their cause, they certainly didn’t cover themselves in glory when mitigating the mentioned factor. Subsequently, they’ve let go of several top-quality players for meagre amounts whereas they’ve also let a few footballers depart for free.
Thus, through the course of this article, we would focus on the latter aspect and chalk down the 5 best Arsenal players to have pursued newer pastures at the cost of the Gunners not recovering any money.
Without further ado, here is a look at them.
#5 Lukasz Fabianski
Lukasz Fabianski was signed by Arsenal in the summer of 2007 from Legia Warsaw as the Gunners looked for a long-term replacement for Jens Lehmann. However, the Polish keeper was never really able to establish himself as a vital cog in Arsene Wenger’s wheel, despite the Frenchman once claiming that Fabianski boasted all the tools to be the best in the league.
Unsurprisingly, the shot-stopper featured sparingly and was used as a back-up to Manuel Almunia and later, Wojciech Szczęsny. However, Fabianski did play a major role in ending the Gunners’ nine-year trophy drought when he starred in Arsenal’s FA Cup campaign in 2013-14, which culminated with a 3-2 extra-time victory over Hull City in the final.
Rather inevitably though, that proved to be his final appearance for the North Londoners as he opted to switch bases and move to Swansea once his contract at Arsenal had come to an end on the 1st of July 2014.
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