Irish midfielder dug his heels in at Nottingham Forest for three-and-a-half years
It’s a question the former Republic of Ireland midfielder must have asked himself time and again over the last three years as he watched the final years of his football career drift away at Nottingham Forest.
Arter didn’t realise it at the time, but his final game for Forest would be an FA Cup third-round clash against his former club Cardiff City in January 2021.
The three-and-a-half years that have followed are one of the more curious football stories of recent years.
After he signed for Forest in September 2020, Arter was bemused by the turn of events that saw the club attempt to off-load him in the next January transfer window, with manager Chris Hughton making it clear he was not part of his plans.
He had already taken a salary cut to walk away from his Bournemouth contract and with another big drop in wages the only option if he moved again, a stand-off began.
The end result was Arter didn’t play for Forest again and he began a curious existence away from their first team, with all involved in this story accepting there were no grounds for a swift and amicable divorce early in the process.
Even though he didn’t play a role in their promotion story, Forest’s return to the Premier League in May 2022 triggered clauses in Arter’s contract that extended his stay at the club and made his exit even more unlikely.
Two more years passed before Arter finally left when his contract expired in June. Now, at the age of 34, he is taking time to reflect on his three-and-a-half lost years as a footballer.
There are two sides to every story and for the first time since he left Forest, Arter has decided to give his version of events in an exclusive interview with the Sunday World.
This is the story of a young man who lived out his dreams of playing in the Premier League after playing a pivotal role in Bournemouth’s incredible promotion success under Eddie Howe in 2015.
He went on to play for Cardiff in England’s top flight and enjoyed a spell at Fulham prior to his ill-fated move to Forest, while also proudly wearing an Ireland jersey on 19 occasions.
Arter is an over-achiever on so many levels and yet having hit the heights, he would never have imagined his career in English football would end as it did.
This could be a tale of an angry athlete bitter that his career was wrenched away from him by an employer who refused to free him from his captivity, but that is not Arter’s mindset right now.
Instead, he looks back on his football career with pride.
“I’m thankful for having a fantastic career in the game and thankful to the people who gave me a chance to be a footballer and live out my dream, that’s my mindset right now,” begins Arter, speaking to us from his new home in Dubai, where he relocated with his wife and two young children last month.
“The last few years at Forest have not been easy, but I don’t want that to be what I remember from my football career because there were so many fantastic moments.
“When I wasn’t playing at Forest, it made me appreciate all the opportunities I had been given in my career and how lucky I was to be at Bournemouth at the start of their rise towards the Premier League.
“To have someone like Eddie Howe as my manager at the start was so important to my development both as a player and a person, and I will always be grateful for the opportunities he gave me.
“Eddie signed me when I was 19 and I don’t how my career would have looked if I’d had a different manager at the start. I’m so grateful that Eddie was the manager who steered me in the right direction.
“At the end of it all, I played in the Premier League, I played international football for Ireland and I’ve had some amazing moments to look back on. That’s what I prefer to remember.”
Three-and-a-half years is a long time to spend at a football club when you have no chance of kicking a ball in their colours, but Arter accepted his fate long ago and is at peace with the outcome.
“I look back now with no negativity about my time at Forest. The playing side of things didn’t work out, I can’t deny that, but it was still great to be at the club at a time when they were on the up.
“At first, it’s hard to be with the U-21s, but I ended up helping out on the coaching sessions with them and had a great relationship with the coach Warren Joyce. We still speak on a weekly basis now and I made some great friends at the club.
“I also got on great with the manager Steve Cooper and he completely understood the position I was in with my contract.
“The whole situation was taken out of my hands and I feel like I handled it as well as possible.
“I was never fined for anything, I was never late for training, even though I knew I was never going to play.
“So I was disappointed with some of the stories that came out about me because some of them were not true. I’m sure they were released to put me under pressure to leave.
Arter has a lot of respect for former Republic of Ireland manager Stephen Kenny. Photo: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
“One story claimed I turned down a pay-out to leave or terminate my contract, but that never happened. Another said I turned up for pre-season training overweight, but that was also wrong.
“There was another saying I told a player, Dan Gosling, not to join the club, but that never happened either.
“The simple reality was, they didn’t want me as a player and I wasn’t prepared to walk away from my contract. So we got into a position that no one could get out of.”
Arter has now started playing with Precision FC in the Dubai league and is excited about the plans he has to work in different areas of football that will continue his journey in the sport.
And while some reading this may ask why Arter didn’t just walk away from Forest to kick-start his career at another club, he might say put yourself in his position.
If you were at the back-end of your career and sitting on a lucrative contract that you would not get elsewhere, would you walk away and accept a fraction of the wages in another role?
Arter has a family to look after and a future to consider beyond football and while he did not choose for his career to end like this, he found himself at a dead end that offered no routes back.
He has had plenty of time to reflect on what might have been and prefers to remember the good times rather than a finale that passed him by.