Oleksandr Zinchenko was spotted signing Arsenal shirts and greeting supporters in Florida on Thursday... despite remaining a Manchester City player.
The Ukrainian midfielder, 25, is set to complete a £32million transfer from the Etihad to the Emirates. He has joined the Gunners on their pre-season tour of the US and watched their 3-1 victory against Orlando City on Wednesday alongside technical director Edu.
Zinchenko will be Arsenal's fifth signing of the summer after goalkeeper Matt Turner, teenager Marquinhos, forward Gabriel Jesus and midfielder Fabio Vieira. He is also the club's second recent transfer from City with Jesus also swapping Manchester for London.
An image of Zinchenko signing Arsenal shirts and other pieces of memorabilia has gone viral on social media. The image is captioned "super nice dude" - which suggests Gunners fans are very pleased with their newest hero.
Both Zinchenko and Jesus have worked with Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta before as he was Pep Guardiola's assistant at City between July 2016 and December 2019. He left that position to succeeded Unai Emery at the Emirates for his first job in management.
Although the formalities are still to be completed, Zinchenko is effectively an Arsenal player. Guardiola has even paid tribute to the departing star, who played an important role in City's overwhelming success under the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich manager.
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Zinchenko played 128 games for Guardiola's side as they won nine major honours in five years - including four Premier League titles. He also started the club's first ever Champions League final in May 2021, which they lost 1-0 to Premier League rivals Chelsea.
"I'll say on behalf of the club our gratitude on and off the pitch," said Guardiola on Wednesday. "It was nice yesterday with Oleks because we could say bye properly. Unfortunately, Gabi [Jesus] and Raheem [Sterling, who joined Chelsea earlier this summer] could not do it but with him we could and he moves on to Arsenal."
City defender Kyle Walker added: "Zinchenko will be a miss but life goes on. It's a hurdle we have to overcome. We've lost two big characters with Fernandinho and Raz [Sterling]. But me, [Ilkay] Gundogan, Ruben [Dias], Rodri, [Nathan] Ake need to step up and maintain the level when senior players leave."
Zinchenko is likely to play more regularly at Arsenal once the transfer is completed. Although he achieved huge success at City, the 52-cap international never played more than 20 Premier League games during his five full seasons at the Etihad.
Many of those appearances also came at left-back, which is not believed to be Zinchenko's favoured position. The Ukrainian is likely to play in attacking or central midfield under Arteta and will be deployed at left-back when defender Kieran Tierney is injured.
Tierney has struggled with injuries since joining Arsenal three years ago, playing just 64 Premier League games to date. Arteta can also deploy Nuno Tavares at left-back, although the Portugal youth international struggled to impress defensively last season.
