Aaron Ramsdale admits he went on strike at Sheffield United to get his August move to Arsenal.
Speaking to Ben Foster on his The Cycling GK YouTube channel, the 23-year-old said he took drastic action due to his former club’s eye-watering valuation of him.
Ramsdale said, “The numbers which were getting thrown out, there were a couple of times where I lost my head, and it was just like, ‘How can someone be saying £40million for me?’
“I was doing the fan thing: relegated, £40m, it doesn’t make sense.”
He added: “It got to the point of me saying, ‘I understand where you’re coming from but this is what I want to do’.
“They said they wouldn’t stand in my way if a bid comes in or whatever.
“And there were bids coming in and they were turning them down, and I said, ‘Look, you just said…’.
“They were making these numbers up, saying, ‘If we sell you for this then we have to pay Bournemouth back all in one go now and we only have this amount of profit’.
“So it went on and I got told the day of a game that another bid had come in and I decided to play, so Sheffield United knew that, and then after the game they rejected it.
“Normally if you don’t get a move you are rewarded with a new contract – it’s not set in stone but it’s normal, you saw it at Brentford with Ollie Watkins when he didn’t move – so we said that.
“And someone at the football club, won’t name names, said: ‘We didn’t ask him to take less money when he was conceding goals at the start of last year’. And that was when I basically went, ‘No, I won’t play against West Brom, do what you want’.
“And then I didn’t train for the first two days, and the manager was like, “He’ll be alright, he’ll play”, and Tuesday came and I said, “I’m not playing.”
“Wednesday the team news comes out that I’m not in the squad and then within 45 minutes, about 10 minutes before kick-off, I was on my way down [to sign].”
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