Arsene Wenger is clearly happy with this particular piece of transfer business, although it has some way to go before it starts to look as good a transfer as the signing of the superb Chile international striker Alexis Sanchez from Barcelona in the summer.
But the manager is very happy with what he has seen so far from the Gunners’ first signing of the January transfer window. The Frenchman is of course reluctant to put much pressure on Krystian Bielik, but he has suggested in an Arsenal.com report that the 17-year old midfielder from Legia Warsaw could start to feature and have an impact on the Arsenal first team a lot sooner than most of us expected.
Our new Gunner has been training with his new team mates this week and Wenger admits that he will not be available to play for about three weeks or so as the winter break in Poland, as well as Bielik’s age and physique, mean that he is not ready for the rigours of the Premier League and English football just yet. But he has obviously been impressive in the training sessions so far.
Wenger said, “I would say, considering his age, he’s more one for the future.
“But let’s be open minded and let [him] surprise us. The first signs that we see are very positive in training.
“Because they had the winter break in Poland, we are just at the starting point of building him up fitness-wise.
“He’s a young boy and he has a huge talent.”
I for one am certainly looking forward to seeing this young Gunner on the pitch, especially if he really does deserve the comparisons with our former captain and midfield general Patrick Vieira.