Manchester United trio were always levels above our Arsenal team and we could never compete

Former Arsenal midfielder Jack Wilshere has insisted he knew that his team would never be able to compete with Manchester United when they had Wayne Rooney, Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand in their squad.

Wilshere came through the ranks at Arsenal in the 2000s and managed to break into the first-team squad in the early 2010s at the end of Sir Alex Ferguson's reign. Despite the United legend's tenure coming to an end, the Gunners were struggling to compete with the teams at the top end of the Premier League.

The Reds won the Premier League twice while Wilshere was a first-team regular for the North London club who at the time were battling to qualify for the Champions League spots. Such competition at the top end of the division was hard to stomach for some Arsenal fans who began to turn on Arsene Wenger after his targets shifted from winning the Premier League to merely qualifying for Europe.

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In an interview with William Hill’s podcast, Up Front with Simon Jordan, Wilshere insisted that he had come to terms with the power shift in English football around this period. "Being totally honest, as a group of players we knew that fighting for the top four was now our level," he explained.

"Manchester City had just come through, spent a load of money on the likes of Samir Nasri and Emmanuel Adebayor. Manchester United were still there with the likes Wayne Rooney, Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand.

"We knew that we were always going to fall short. There were never any conversations between players where we questioned why Arsene Wenger was coming out with lines like ‘top four is a trophy’. It was difficult for fans to understand