Arsenal: Bernd Leno transfer process rather remarkable

Arsenal have reportedly landed their solution at keeper, and yet again, the entire process was a rather remarkable one given the state of the club.

It started out as a distant rumor, but in the process of a few weeks, and only a few weeks, Arsenal have landed Bernd Leno. It’s official. There is no backing out on this now. Yet another crucial deal has been completed.

Yet again, the club has proven just how quickly and efficiently they are getting deals done. The World Cup is, naturally, causing a bit of a hang-up with securing moves, but for the most part, the Gunners have been so on top of things that it’s borderline scary.

From the moment Arsene Wenger announced that he was retiring – even before that, really – it’s felt like the club has buckled down and, for lack of a better phrase, “gotten serious about things.”

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Nowhere is that better seen than in the transfer process with Bernd Leno. It was clear throughout the year that the Gunners needed a new keeper. Not necessarily a no-doubt, top of the world kind of guy, but someone who could take that first team role and run with it, competing with Petr Cech.

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In the past, with Wenger, I don’t think we’d have gone after Leno as seriously as we did. Petr Cech still has value, and that value may well have warded off any interest in Leno.

But with Leno, he turned from far-off rumor, to completed transfer, in about a month. Not even that long. There were plenty of talks about a £26m keeper that struggled to regain his early form with Bayer Leverkusen, but the idea that the Gunners would spend half of their reported summer budget on a keeper seemed far-fetched.

Not only did the Gunners accomplish the deal, but they did it under budget, with the fee reportedly only reaching £19m, a bargain in every sense of the word. Leno will live up to that price tag and then some, because in cause you haven’t noticed, Raul Sanllehi and Sven Mislintat both have a very high success rate with these kinds of things.

So consider it a prequel to another typical success story.

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This is exciting. So many of the needs – clear needs – of this club have been addressed early on. It’s shaping up to be a remarkably stress free summer, and we don’t get to say that often.