Robin van Persie take a swipe at Arsenal

Robin van Persie has taken a cheeky swipe at Arsenal after claiming the champions he surrounds himself with at Manchester United have made him feel like an excited child again.

The Holland striker left north London in a £24million deal in the summer and has already hit 22 goals for the Barclays Premier League leaders.

The move is still hurts those he left behind, but speaking at a warm weather training camp in Doha, Van Persie insists he has no regrets about the switch.

He said: 'Arsenal are a great club but after eight years sometimes you feel that you need a new challenge. If you look at the last couple of months it explains it all. I'm seeing things again that I didn't see for a long time. All these guys here know how to win and become champions.

'When I came to Arsenal years ago, I saw things from Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry I'd never seen before. Now I'm seeing those things again and that makes me really happy. It's like a kid in a sweet shop. It's like, "This is good, this is having fun, this is enjoying yourself".

'All these little things added together make a big difference. It makes me feel that I'm surrounded by champions.'

Van Persie's hot streak in front of goal has more than begun paying back his transfer fee but he claims to still see space for improvement.

He added: 'It should have been 10 games, 14 or 15 goals. At least four or five I shouldn't have missed. It's not going really well. It is going well but if you start to believe it's going well, you're going down.

'If I look at all those games, I should have done better in most of them because I had more chances than just one chance and one goal.'