Thomas Partey has discussed his final day move from Atletico Madrid to Arsenal.
Although Arsenal had long been interested in bringing Partey to England, no one expected them to land him that late in the transfer window.
They had tried all summer to get Atletico Madrid to sell him, but the Spaniards kept insisting that the Gunners have to pay his release clause.
Arsenal even tried to sign Lyon’s Houssem Aouar instead, but that deal also didn’t work out.
They eventually returned for him and he became an Arsenal player with only a few minutes left before the close of the transfer window.
He has now revealed that everything happened so fast, detailing a story of how a chef in Spain begged him not to leave the Spanish capital and his agent had to assure the chef that he will be staying.
‘I was not thinking of anything, I was OK 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.’
He added: ‘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.’
Partey has started two games for the Gunners and he is looking more and more comfortable as an Arsenal player, it will not take long before he shows why he was so sought-after.
