Robin Van Persie: Should He Regret His Move Away?

According to multiple reports from multiple media outlets, Robin Van Persie is all but done at Manchester United.  Recent reports indicate that he is working on a move to Turkish side Fenerbahce.  It’s been reported that Manchester United started negotiating the transfer behind the Dutchman’s back.  After such an amazing start Van Persie’s United career seems to be over. Now that his time in Manchester seems to be over with only one trophy, people are wondering whether he made the right decision by leaving Arsenal for Manchester United.

Van Persie’s move to Manchester United was a controversial one to say the least.  With only a year left on his Arsenal contract, the Dutchman refused to sign a new deal at he Emirates.  This put Arsene Wenger in a predicament and with Van Persie stating that he wanted to stay in England the French manager was forced to sell his star player to Manchester United.  The Dutchman released a statement saying that he didn’t agree with the direction Arsenal was going.  After his first season in Manchester, it looked like the striker made the right decision.

Robin Van Persie won the Barclays Premier League in his first season at Manchester United.  While he didn’t score as many goals as he did in his final season at Arsenal, he still managed to carry the Red Devils to the title.  His 26 league goals won him the Golden Boot for the second year running and United walked to the league title finishing 11 points clear of second place.  At the end of the season however Sir Alex Ferguson retired as Manchester United manager.  David Moyes was appointed as the manager to succeed Sir Alex, and that sent Manchester United into a bit of a transitional period.

With David Moyes as manager, United had their worst Premier League season ever.  They finished seventh in the league and 22 points off of top spot.  Van Persie himself also had a tough season because he had a tough time staying fit. While he did manage 12 goals he only made 21 appearances and his lack of fitness contributed to his team’s failure.

Meanwhile, after scraping fourth the prior season, Arsenal were ahead of United for the entire season and were able to break their nine year trophy drought.  After the end of the season, David Moyes was sacked after less than 12 months in charge.  The man appointed to replace the Scotsman was Van Persie’s national team manager, Louis Van Gaal.

With Van Gaal in charge United struggled again early on.  Eventually they did find their feet and climbed up the table.  They eventually finished fourth getting the team back into the Champions’ League.  After crashing out of the Capital One Cup early and having no European football, United’s only chance at a trophy was the FA Cup.  They got good draws to get themselves into the quarter-finals and faced Van Persie’s former club Arsenal.  The Dutchman missed out through injury and the Red Devils found themselves out of the cup with Arsenal getting their first win at Old Trafford in 10 years.  Van Persie himself had a really poor season only making 29 total appearances struggling again through injury.  His former club went on to finish above United again and retain the FA Cup.

While his career at Manchester United didn’t go as well as he may have liked, he did win the Premier League, which was his main objective.  He’ll always wonder what could have happened had he stayed at the Emirates.  They could have done better than they did winning more silverware and achieving better league finishes.  But I do think he prefers winning the Premier League to two FA Cups.  There is the chance that he could have been a club legend had he stayed at Arsenal, but that wasn’t definitely going to happen.  Considering the wages he would have been on had he extended his contract, he likely would have been forced to leave at around the same time or take a massive pay cut.  In the end, I think he’ll be happy with his decision to go to Old Trafford.  No one knows the correct answer except for the man himself, but I think the Premier League title validated his decision to make the move to Manchester United.