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Dear Manu,

Can I call you that? It’s just I feel that, over the past three and a half years, we’ve really to come to know each other.

I am writing to you to see if I can help you with you quandary. I gather that you’re having doubts over your move to Manchester – who wouldn’t? – and might be holding out for a better offer from someone else.

The way I see it, Manu, you’re lucky that City want you, because, frankly, no one else is interested. Not Milan, not United, and certainly not us. You see, while we appreciate the sixty-two goals you scored for us, some of them spectacular, we genuinely feel like you’ve f***ed with us over the last year or so. It’s not just that you were constantly linked with a move abroad a year ago, us Gooners are sadly very used to our major players being linked with Europe’s elite, it’s that you and your sh*t-stirring agent were so brazen, shameless and disrespectful in your attempts to whore yourself to Milan. When it happened to Vieira and Henry, and every time Cesc has his name mentioned, they dealt with it in a manner that underlined their respect for the fans and the great club that had made them who they are. You? Well, I’d say you acted like a mercenary if you hadn’t been so amateurish.

Back then, most of us wanted you gone. We could see that a player so evidently full of himself that he expects a £100,000+ a week salary and a place among the pantheon of great strikers after one good season was not what the club needed, while the money you could bring in could be spent on players that it did. The sense of disappointment that the apparent £30million deal didn’t go through quickly turned to dissatisfaction when you patronisingly kissed your badge after scoring a meaningless goal in a meaningless friendly, taking us for absolute imbeciles.

Dissatisfaction became anger as you to spent what seemed like the entire season offside, and topped it all off with a sinfully lazy performance against United in the Champions’ League semi-finals, a team you had terrorised in your first years at the club, and a stage where a player as clearly confident in his greatness should be grabbing the game, if you don’t mind me saying, by the balls. Don’t get me started on the self-pitying interview you gave shortly afterwards.

I can’t thumb my nose at sixteen goals, and the one you scored against Villarreal was fantastic, but you were playing with some of the world’s most creative footballers. Nicklas Bendtner, a young player who has had to make his way in this club the hard way, incurring the ignorant wrath of those expecting everyone to be as good as Thierry Henry immediately, scored one less goal from four less starts and, most importantly, evidently cared about the shirt. I daresay he gets paid a lot less than you, too.

And the thing is, Manu, it wasn’t just us that didn’t like what we saw this season gone. Do you think your performances impressed anyone with ambitions to domestic and European glory? Did you really think you could phone in your performances for a year and still be coveted by Milan? After you disappeared so scandalously against United only two and a bit months ago, do you think they’re at all interested in giving one of their biggest rivals £25million, and then paying you £150,000 a week?

Fat chance.

No Manu, I’m afraid to say you’re damaged goods. Give thanks for small mercies, and take City’s ridiculous offer. Their fans are so starved of success and quality that the complete lack of effort – to get onside, to use your physique to battle a centre back, to chase lost causes – might not get to them for a while. Unfortunately for you, there’s very few other clubs that can pay the ludicrous money you think you deserve that haven’t already seen right through you.

If you need some help packing, I think I might know some people who’d be willing to give you a hand.