Collymore: Why Jamie Vardy Should Have Signed For Arsenal

Stan Collymore claims that Jamie Vardy should have left Leicester City and joined Arsenal in the summer as it would have made him an England regular.

Vardy took the Premier League by storm last season, scoring 24 goals in 36 games to fire Claudio Ranieri’s men to a shock title ahead of Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur.

The 29-year-old’s stunning form led to strong interest from Arsene Wenger and with the boss desperately looking to bring in a new striker during the summer, he agreed to meet Vardy’s £20m buyout clause back in June.

A deal seemed on the verge of completion after the striker held face-to-face talks with Wenger but Vardy then had a last minute change of heart and decided to commit his future to the King Power stadium by signing a new long-term contract.

The striker has found goals much harder to come by this season with just 3 in his 11 appearances so far with defending champions Leicester languishing down in 12th place in the table.

Turning down a big-money move to a club like Arsenal couldn’t have been an easy decision to make but it’s one that pundit Stan Collymore thinks Vardy may live to regret.

Writing in his column for the Mirror, Collymore says that Vardy doesn’t have the same ‘swagger’ as he did last year and will no doubt have thought about what might have been had he moved to the Emirates.

And the former Liverpool and Nottingham Forest hitman believes that Vardy should regret not joining Arsenal as he would be England’s leading striker had he moved to north London in the summer.

Vardy has played just 17 minutes of England’s last three qualifiers against Slovakia, Slovenia and Malta with the likes of Daniel Sturridge, Harry Kane and Wayne Rooney all ahead of him in the pecking order – despite not starring for their clubs so far this season.

Collymore claims that the trio are picked ahead of Vardy because they play for ‘big’ clubs such as Liverpool, Tottenham and Man Utd and feels that Vardy would be first choice if he played for Arsenal instead of Leicester due to ‘snobbery’ within the game.

The pundit went on to suggest that Vardy may have lost a little of his mojo this season but would have been fired-up to prove something had he accepted a move to the Gunners, which would have led to better performances on the pitch.

Who knows what would have happened if Vardy did join Arsenal. It was certainly a surprise he turned us down and I get the feeling he simply bottled it. He’s comfortable at Leicester and the pressure would have been on if he moved to the Emirates so he took the easy choice.