Technical Director at Arsenal, Edu Gaspar says Ghana’s Thomas Partey has been in the plans of the club in the last seven months.
The Gunners triggered the £45million release clause of the Atlético Madrid star in order to secure his services.
After months of rumours, the North London-based club secured the signature of the 27-year-old in the dying hours of transfer deadline day.
The club has been a long admirer of Partey even before the appointment of Edu, and it remained as such when the technical director and Arteta formulated their plans for the summer window.
“One day I would like to show the fans how we work, or how we worked because if you saw my plan six or seven months ago when I did it with Mikel, Thomas was there already,” he told Arsenal.com.
“So you see how many months we had to try to find the right player for the club.
“So many things to do, so many meetings, we had to see how we were going to buy the player, if we had the financial situation to buy the player, the legal process, the financial process, talk to the player, talk to the agent, so there are a lot of things around this but in the end we did it!”
