Nasri: I’d be better if Wenger was my boss

Samir Nasri claims he would have coped better at Manchester City this season if Arsene Wenger had been his manager.

The French midfielder hit out at current boss Roberto Mancini and lifted the lid on his departure from Arsenal, claiming Wenger promised he could stay at the club if Cesc Fabregas left to Barcelona the same summer. That didn’t happen because Gunners owner Stan Kroenke did not want Nasri leaving the club for nothing 12 months later.

Nasri responded to Mancini, who criticised the player for not training at full capacity. “Mancini showed bad faith in his comments,” Nasri said. “He’s exaggerating. If he wants to hit me then he should hit me. He doesn’t necessarily speak all that good English so sometimes his comments are a bit raw. When he said I trained at 50%, that wasn’t true. I haven’t had a good season, I am aware of that and the first to admit it. To say it’s because of a lack of effort just isn’t true.”

Nasri was talking on French TV station BeInSport on Monday night, where he gave a frank explanation of his controversial move to City.

“It’s time to talk, explain and say certain things,” he said. “Arsene Wenger is the greatest coach I’ve worked with, the one who understood me most, with whom I had the greatest affinity. I’m very grateful to him as he signed me after perhaps my worst season at Marseille when I had a bout of meningitis. He played a huge role in my career.

“Stan Kroenke told Wenger he couldn’t sit on the transfer fee as I would have been available on a free the following summer. Wenger had sat me down and told me if Cesc went then I had to stay. I’ve been back to thetraining ground at Arsenal two or three times since and I get on fine with Wenger. If I’d worked with Wenger at Manchester City then maybe I would have avoided some problems.”

Nasri was banned for three France matches following his behaviour at Euro 2012: notably, his ‘Ferme ta gueule!’ (‘shut your mouth!’) shush gesture after scoring against England, a dressing-room spat with Alou Diarra after the defeat to Sweden and finally, an expletive-ridden tirade at a French reporter in the mixed zone after France’s elimination at the hands of eventual winners Spain.

“When you are a footballer and you’re not right in the head you cannot perform well. I closed in on myself rather than do my mea culpa and I was in a negative frame of mind thinking that everybody was against me. The journalist in question was in the wrong but I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did ” he said.

“When I singled out the L’Equipe journalist after scoring against England my Dad called me and shouted at me. I read everything written about me because we were in a hotel in the Ukraine and there was nothing else to do.”