We finally got the announcement on Christian Mosquera yesterday and as usual it was accompanied by a pretty swish intro video that had all the hallmarks of the Arsenal social media team. Nicely put together, he said the right things and by all accounts this looks and feels like a very good an sensible signing.

I like these kind of signings, because it has rivals going “who’s he? Arsenal have bought poorly again” and because they don’t know the player or haven’t become invested in him like us since the deals of a potential move surfaced, they sleep on him a bit. But when you start reading into him, his profile and also the bloody size of him – he’s six foot three at 20 years old! – you see that he feels like a very impressive acquisition. Although I  have to lay my cards on the table here; I don’t really know much about him and don’t really watch much Spanish football other than the odd game if it’s on in the background as I’m cooking. So I read up on this article from Phil Costa on Arseblog and I have to say, that ticks all the boxes for me. Comparisons to Rudiger, a player who has the kind of minutes under your belt that you’d expect from a 23-year-old, can play either side of the defence, good ball retention and I love it when I get the ‘Gandalf’ feeling from reading about a player. You know what I’m talking about – that “YOU SHALL NOT PASS” kind of vibe. Super stuff.

We of course need to let him get settled in, he needs time to adapt to the English game and its physicality, but he looks like he’s got all of the tools to be a very good signing for us and it’s the first one that I think most of us know is a true ‘Berta’ signing. Even in the video itself Mosquera references ‘the sporting director’ along with Mikel as the reasons he wanted so desperately to sign. And it’s another one that ‘desperately’ wanted to sign, which has become a feature of the signings this summer. Players moving heaven and earth to get to your club is a sure sign that when they put on that shirt, they are walking an inch or two taller, are going to try that little bit more, which is all we ever ask of as fans. But yes, this one is for sure a Berta one. There’s lots of talk about the great summer he’s had, but I do think that does a little bit of injustice to the groundwork that was already done. I think Zubimendi, for example, was already sorted. And I’m not sure (but happy to be told otherwise) whether he had too much impact on the Big Gabi signing, because that seemed to happen pretty quickly after he’d walked through the door, if my memory serves me right. The rumours of Gyokeres or Sesko have persisted for most of this season gone by and although Berta clearly had his preference and maybe that’s what has led us to the Swede, I wouldn’t think he’s ‘instrumental’ on the deal, but maybe just did his bit to push it over the line.

I dunno, perhaps I’m doing Andrea a disservice, but for this one I think it feels to me 100% like this is ‘his guy’. Apparently according to Phil’s article there were rumours that Berta wanted him at Atleti, so that shows you how much of an influence he’s clearly had here. It’s proper pissed Valencia off too by the looks of it. That statement is as cold as you’re gonna get from his selling club. Eek.

But he’ll move on, they’ll move on, hopefully it works well for him and we have a guy who will compete for a starting spot within a few seasons.

The other article I wanted to give you a heads up on was an Athletic article written by Gunnerblog that was released yesterday (behind a paywall here). What I loved about it was the way in which Rice spoke about Madueke, saying how driven he is to prove everyone wrong and be a success. Again, a response from one of our pseudo captains along the lines of “wait and see guys, you’re going to be excited” is the sort of thing you want to read as a fan. We’ve all had our say on the transfer, but now it’s time to see what he can actually do with a red and white shirt on and I hope Rice is right about him surprising people.

I also hope he’s right about his own ambitions. We all wondered about Rice last season at the start and he himself said that the Euro’s and basically having two week’s to ‘get over it’ before being pushed back out on the Premier League stage meant that he didn’t quite feel with it. We all saw that play out. But we saw the real Rice towards the final third of the season and if we think about how he’s had plenty of rest, a full pre season under his belt and now is ready and raring to go, it’s exciting. To me it feels exciting that we could get the Declan Rice that finished the season, starting this season, so when you couple that with the hope that Odegaard is over his struggles, Kai has beefed up, Ethan and Myles are a year older (and Ethan looks like he’s been taking his vitamins!), we’ve got an upgrade at six in Zubimendi and a lot of depth options have been solved – something else Rice mentioned.

It makes me really hope we get to make some rival fans chow down on some humble pie next season. I’ve seen plenty saying we’ve bought bang average players, we will finish between fourth to sixth, that there’s no chance we’re competing and I’m absolutely fine with that. I just hope we can kick on early on and show them that we mean business this season, because I think we really do, and I hope Rice is right with what he was saying.

Catch you tomorrow – maybe – I’m doing a cheeky weekend in Cologne to see family so may or may not get time for writing stuff.