I felt ashamed after leaving Man City for Arsenal - I had the worst season of my career

Manchester City title-winner Oleksandr Zinchenko has made a candid admission about his time at Arsenal

Oleksandr Zinchenko admitted to feeling ashamed as his Arsenal career began to unravel.

The Ukrainian defender left Manchester City for the Gunners in 2022 and, bar some injury issues, was a regular in Mikel Arteta's side in his early years at the Emirates. However, things took a downward turn for Zinchenko in the 2024/25 season, when he started just five Premier League games.

The arrival of Riccardo Calafiori and the emergence of youngster Myles Lewis-Skelly severely limited his game time. Zinchenko, who spent six years at the Etihad, winning four Premier League titles, found his diminishing status hard to take.

Writing in a new chapter of his updated autobiography, he said: "I was basically out of the starting XI altogether, bar a few isolated matches. In pure personal terms, it was easily the worst season I ever experienced as a professional."

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He added: "A player who doesn’t play is nothing. It’s one thing when your body lets you down. That can happen.

"But going from one of the established play­ers of the side to unused sub is much harder to deal with. The sense of rejection you feel if your manager no longer believes in you can take the stuffing out of you, even if you’re the most resilient guy on the planet.

"Sitting on the bench in the Premier League for a very generous wage packet is obviously still a privilege, the kind of problem that billions of people on this planet would swap their much tougher lives for in a heartbeat. Trust me, as a Ukrainian, I'm aware of that. Every single minute.

"But every footballer started playing because they love to play the game. A big part of your life is missing without it."

Zinchenko wrote about one particularly painful memory when his two daughters came to watch a game at the Emirates. He recalled: "Eva, the older one at three-and-a-half, says to Leia, 'Look, there’s Daddy.' Leia looks all over the pitch but can’t find me. And then Eva points and says. 'No, he's not playing. He's on the bench.'

"Hearing that pained me a lot. It made me feel ashamed. I'm quite grateful that the girls are not yet at an age where they're exposed to social media and don't have to read nasty stuff about their dad who can’t get into the Arsenal team anymore."

Following his lack of game time, Zinchenko joined Nottingham Forest on a season-long loan last summer. However, after limited game time under Forest's three managers over the first half of the season, his loan was cut short, allowing him to join Ajax on a permanent deal in January.

With two of his former clubs involved, Zinchenko will no doubt have a close eye on Sunday's Carabao Cup final at Wembley.