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‹ Tuesday Round Up | August 30th 2016 | Draxler

Deal Close – Defender Confirmation Today

Arsene Wenger confirmed that Shkodran Mustafi and Lucas Perez had both passed their medicals after the game on Saturday.

He said there was paperwork to finalise, and with yesterday being a Bank Holiday in the UK, this surely means today is the day that things are confirmed. Arsenal.com tweeted this…

Both players will join straight away, with Mustafi away on international duty this week, but Perez hasn’t been selected by Spain so he will join those other not affected by the interlull this week for training with his new team mates.
With injuries to Gabriel and Per Mertesacker, Mustafi will probably slot straight into the side alongside Laurent Koscielny for the Southampton home game next week, but it’s yet to be seen if Wenger will stick Perez straight into the starting line up.

Mustafi and Perez are still to select a shirt number, but Perez will surely plump for the number 9 shirt as an out and out striker. Mustafi however, his choices are a bit limited, he will probably end up with 21, which is his shirt number for Germany, as 5 and 6 are already taken by Gabriel and Koscielny.

Mustafi also confirmed, that it was surprisingly not Per Mertesacker who convinced him to join Arsenal, but his other German/Arsenal team mate, Mesut Ozil who assisted his decision.

He said:

“Ozil told me everything I wanted to know, everything was positive, so I was convinced very fast. It did not take much, I have always loved Arsenal, I like how they play here, it is not typically English…”

So, fingers crossed the announcement won’t take too much longer, and we can get down to the job in hand, seeing off the interlull and getting down to preparing for the visit of Southampton. This takes place a week on Saturday, where we’ll be hoping for a better result than the frustrating 0-0 from last season…