Posted by Arsenal new boy Thomas Partey has narrated the story behind his crazy deadline day move to Arsenal.
The combative midfielder on the final day of the summer transfer window sealed a €50m move to Arsenal from Atletico Madrid.
According to the Ghanaian midfielder who has been on the wanted list of Arsenal through the transfer window, he was unaware he would be moving to Arsenal on deadline day and was preparing for training when his agent informed him about the move.
‘I was not thinking of anything, I was okay I was talking to a friend that I train with to go and train in the morning and then my agent called me,’ he told Sky Sports.
‘He said ‘no, we have to go to this place to sign this paper’ in case we have to sign some papers for you and you are not there, we will sign for you.
‘So in the morning we went there, we did that. Since we went out from the morning we could not come back home.’
Partey added that he visited a restaurant with his agent on deadline day in Madrid, and the chef, who happens to a fan of Atletico Madrid begged him not to leave the club.
‘We went to a restaurant to eat and the chef was like ‘don’t leave us today’, I was like ‘what do you mean?’
‘He was like ‘today is the deadline day, do not leave us today’.
‘And I think my agent knew something about that and was like ‘nothing will happen don’t worry’.
‘So we went to sign the papers, we went to eat and I think they talked to Edu (Gaspar), and Edu said ‘no, we have to do this today’.
‘I was like ‘how are we going to do this today?’ And we had to go now, now, now to do medical and that’s how everything happened.’
Thomas Partey since joining Arsenal in mid-October has featured in 3 games, with one of those games coming from the bench.