Leandro Trossard had a very bitter departure from Brighton & Hove Albion after basically forcing their hands to sell him to Arsenal.
The Belgian winger had earned the reputation of being a major fan-favourite for the Seagulls and played a major role in their impressive start to the Premier League season.
Trossard became one of the rare visiting players to score a hattrick at Anfield during Brighton’s 3-3 draw against Liverpool earlier this season.
He was contributing in a major way to the Seagulls’ success and helped them compete for a place in the Premier League top half even after the sudden departure of Graham Potter in October.
But it appears that greed might’ve gotten the better of Trossard after the World Cup. After initially finding interest from Potter’s Chelsea side, he realized that this might be the best time to make a jump to an elite Premier League club.
He had hoped that Brighton would easily let him leave as soon as the January transfer window opened after the World Cup break. However, the Seagulls were not bending over that easily. They resisted offers, which saw Chelsea end their interest and others disinterested.
In a desperate push to leave the club, Trossard started behaving really poorly in Brighton’s training sessions. He got into a training ground fight with a teammate, who was disgusted by his disrespectful attitude.
The 28-year-old even walked out of training without informing De Zerbi, infuriating the manager as well.
Brighton initially punished Trossard by banishing him from training and making him sit at home while they continued their season. But after the Gunners started to show genuine interest to sign him, Brighton opted to cash in on him rather than have a disgruntled figure.
Now that Trossard has been confirmed as a new Arsenal player, some interesting details about that training incident have come to light. The winger’s agent confirmed this altercation, but nobody revealed who the player was with whom he had an issue.
Well, it has since been revealed that the player was midfielder Adam Lallana. Some speculated that it was captain Lewis Dunk who took issue with Trossard’s actions, but that wasn’t the case.
Lallana was unimpressed with how unprofessional the Belgian winger was behaving just because he wouldn’t get his way over a potential transfer.
They had a row, even though the entire extent of the fight is yet to be revealed. Trossard did not return to training after that before making the move to North London.
While Lallana hasn’t confirmed his dislike for Trossard and anything about the altercation, he has made some interesting comments on his ex-teammate after his Arsenal move.
Lallana said: “You only need to look at the last three games without him [Trossard], I think it’s been 5-1, 4-1 and 3-0. So as I said to you earlier, players can leave Brighton but we’ve got enough without them.
“We had enough without [Yves] Bissouma, [Marc] Cucurella, Ben White, Dan Burn, when Neal [Maupay] moved on. So if Leo moves on we’ll cope. We’re coping already.”
This is a sly way for Lallana to hit out at Trossard for his disrespectful way of leaving Brighton, also indicating that they no longer get on well with each other.
The two players could come to blows when the Seagulls travel to face Arsenal on 13 May in the Premier League – winning which could even help crown the Gunners as the champions and vindicate Trossard’s reason to push to join them.