Burnley FC: Johann Berg Gudmundsson explains why he made shock move to Saudi Arabia

The 33-year-old caused quite the surprise this week when he departed Turf Moor for the second time in the space of just 100 days.

The ‘Iceman’ was let go by the club at the end of last season, only to make a shock return 49 days later on a one-year contract.

Despite scoring on his 200th appearance during last week’s 5-0 thrashing of Cardiff City, Gudmundsson has since departed for a second time – ending his eight-year spell for good with a permanent switch to Al-Orobah FC for an undisclosed fee.

Explaining what happened, Gudmundsson told Clarets+: “It’s something I didn’t expect. An opportunity came up that was too good to turn down, an exciting project.

“I definitely didn’t expect this. My focus was obviously to come back to Burnley and do the best for Burnley, but I felt a new challenge was something I needed and this opportunity came up.

“It’s a good opportunity for me and because I’m in the later stages of my career, I want to play football as long as I can and I thought at this time this was the right step.

“But as I said, it’s an unexpected one and definitely something I didn’t expect, but here we are.”

Gudmundsson added: “It happened extremely quickly. I’m flying out and we have a few games before the international break.

“It’s difficult. I said goodbye, I came back, I say goodbye again, so there’s a lot of emotions. But it was fantastic to play at Turf Moor [in his last game].

“I wasn’t involved in the first game [against Luton Town], I had a bit of an injury but I came back, trained a few times and scored. There was something magical about it. I was just extremely happy to play my last game at Turf Moor and score a goal in a 5-0 win.”

Despite moving on with a heavy heart, Gudmundsson is confident the Clarets are destined for good things.

“It’s really hard to leave this club,” he said. “This club is in fantastic hands though with the new manager, he’s been fantastic in pre-season and at the start of the season too.

“The team will need the fans every home game and every away game to push them through to hopefully get the promotion back to the best league in the world. I will be following closely and speaking to everybody throughout the season.

“It’s a really good start for the team but I feel like they’re going to get even better.”

“It’s obviously a completely different culture we’re going into, but we’re from Iceland we can adapt quite well, so hopefully it will be fine.

“It might be difficult for the family, they’ve been here for eight years, the kids are in school and they’re happy here, so it’s a big change for us as a family.

“But it’s an opportunity for us to grow as a family and stick together in these times, so there’s going to be a lot of change for us for sure.

“Hopefully it will be a good step for me in my career and something new for them to learn as well.”