Arsène Wenger has denied blocking Mathieu Debuchy from moving to Manchester United last January, but the Arsenal manager has revealed the French defender is up for sale.

Arsenal take on Crystal Palace at the Emirates on Sunday but Debuchy, who has spent only 16 minutes on the pitch for the club this season, will not be playing as he has a hamstring injury and has also slipped down the pecking order. He is arguably Wenger’s fourth-choice right-back behind Héctor Bellerín, Carl Jenkinson and the youth prospect Ainsley Maitland-Niles. The 31-year-old Frenchman has been frozen out of the first-team picture for some time, and spent the second half of last season on loan at Bordeaux.

Mathieu Debuchy determined to leave Arsenal in January transfer window Read more

In an interview with L’Equipe, moreover, Debuchy claimed his relationship with Wenger had deteriorated and that a number of potential transfers had been prevented from happening. “We acknowledge each other, we say hello, nothing more,” he said. “My situation doesn’t meet what I had been hoping for, but that’s football. There have been things, injuries and the coach’s choices, that have meant that I haven’t played. Even if I don’t understand, I’m not surprised, I know how it works.

“I have had some very difficult moments. Now I try to channel that, to take it out in my work. I don’t show anything, I dig in. I have always worked like that. I want a way out. I want to take on a new challenge, to get back into it, to simply do my job properly. At a given time you miss the excitement, the adrenaline.”

Debuchy went on to suggest he had been denied the opportunity to sign for United last January and that further chances to leave in the summer failed to happen. “I wasn’t playing a lot, it was United, there’s nothing else to say. For me it was almost unexpected, but the coach said no,” he added. “It’s something I did not appreciate. He wasn’t using me, so I didn’t see his interest in doing that.

“I had opportunities at the end of the transfer window. Unfortunately the club didn’t want to let me go. I had a good pre‑season, I gave my all, but from the first game I wasn’t in the squad. It was a real blow. I said to myself that things weren’t starting well.”

However, Wenger insisted on Friday that United did not bid for the former Newcastle United player. “They have never made an offer for him,” he said. “It’s completely untrue. It’s sometimes surprising to hear things like that.”

He was also unequivocal when asked if Debuchy is for sale when the transfer window opens next week. “Yes, of course, but we speak. We have communication with all the players. It’s a little bit of a frustrated article from a player who is injured, you know when you are injured you cannot play.

“When he had the opportunities to play when Bellerín was injured, he was injured [too]. So I cannot do anything about that. I gave him last year the opportunity to go to Bordeaux on loan, but we had nobody coming in for him over the summer period and there are some things that are not true in this article.

“We never blocked him to go to Fiorentina, nor Espanyol. They had no interest in him at all because we checked that, so you have to take this [L’Equipe] article with a little distance.”