Dutch striker Robin Van Persie revealed how he was 'ruthlessly' asked to leave the Old Trafford under Louis van Gaal.
Persie had won his first Premier League title after joining from Arsenal.
Just two months after Van Gaal was appointed as manager, Van Persie was sold to Fenerbahce for £4 million.
"I was like: ‘Yeah but I still have a contract?’ He said: ‘I don’t care’," Van Persie said on The High Performance podcast.
"Ruthless. Towards the end of it, I saw something coming but not this ruthless. And the way he said it as well. And then a lot of things go through your mind when you get a message like that.
"I still had a contract, my family was happy, it was my 11th year in England. We love living in England. What’s next? ‘My kids are going to school, they have their friends and everything. So in a split second, all these things come across [your mind]. How do you react to that? I said: 'We will see what happens. That’s your opinion. But I have a contract and I’m happy in England at Manchester United. So we will see what happens’.
"And I stood up, shook his hand and left it."
"On the way home back I was thinking: ‘Okay, this is tough. How do you react to a message like that?’
"That ruthless, that hard, that direct. And then loads of things came through my mind and we started pre-season. ‘I wasn’t allowed to play in the 11 versus 11 and I was given a ball and told to do my own stuff.
"So you try to stay calm, stay cool but there’s loads of things happening. You’re playing the macho card. ‘It doesn’t affect me’ but it does. It does affect me, my family and my career. Big time.
"But I tried to stay cool, but maybe at that point it was good for me to talk to someone outside of my inner circle but I was too stubborn to do that.
"Now if I look back at it, there was a couple of points in my career where I should have done that."
