Contract talks with the midfielder had dominated the headlines during Wenger’s final season in charge, but it then became clear early in the 2018/19 campaign that no deal would be done.
“He wanted to stay at Arsenal,” Wenger revealed to beIN Sports on Wednesday night.
“They had an agreement and the club went back on that, what I understood. I tried, for a long time, to extend his contract. But, sometimes, you have influence from agents as well.
“What I know from him, he was keen to stay.”
Ramsey himself similarly revealed in October 2018 that he thought there was an agreement in place with Arsenal, only for the club to withdraw the offer.
“That's a decision they have made – things happen in football and you just have to get on with it and carry on playing the best you can,” the player said at the time.
“Everything has been going great with the club. We thought we were in a position where we had agreed a deal but that's no longer the case.”
The contract that Ramsey went on to sign with Juventus has put him firmly inside the top 10 highest paid players in Serie A this season, behind some Juve teammates and Inter striker Romelu Lukaku. His pre-tax wage is rumoured to be the equivalent of £400,000-per-week.
But in a highly competitive setting and finding himself limited by niggling fitness issues, Ramsey is yet to establish himself in Turin. He has started only four games from a possible 15 in all competitions and hasn’t managed 70 minutes in any of those.
28-year-old Ramsey is almost guaranteed to win trophies with Juventus, but his former manager at Arsenal is worried a player in the peak years of his career should be playing more often.
“You have to win, but when you’re 27 or 28, that’s the best years of a football player. If you don’t play between 27 and 32, that’s difficult to swallow. You can be patient at 21, 22, 23, [but] once you get to 27, you have to play,” Wenger explained.
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Source : 90min