The Russian international joined the Emirates Stadium outfit from Zenit at the beginning of February for £15 million, and enjoyed an explosive start to his Premier League career, netting six league goals in 12 appearances, including four against Liverpool at Anfield.
However, the 28-year-old is an icon in his homeland where he spent nine years at Zenit - winning the Russian Premier League, Russian Cup and UEFA Cup - and has admitted he would like to return there one day and see out the remainder of his playing career.
"I played for Zenit for a long time and now I want to play abroad and then return to St Petersburg to finish off my career there," he told Radio Zenit.
“I do not consider it necessary to comment on," he told Sport Express. “It is just not a topic for conversation.”
"I spent a week in St Petersburg training with my former club Zenit. Everybody was quite kind to me. I cannot say that I communicated a lot with anyone just a bit with everybody.
"I hope that these trainings in my former club would be useful. In any case they were better than a week of doing nothing.
"I don’t think that the attitude of people in St Petersburg has changed when I left. As far as I can see they like me equally even though I am playing in a different team now.”
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