Arsenal’s Premier League rivals Chelsea have beaten Manchester United to the signing of Barcelona winger Pedro Rodriguez this week, and Arsène Wenger has admitted his surprise at the deal.

For weeks now Pedro was allegedly close to a move to Old Trafford, but has ended up a Chelsea player. There are various reasons going around from the player changing his mind to Manchester United changing theirs, but he is now playing under José Mourinho.

“It was a surprise to me,” Wenger expressed in his press conference on Friday morning, trying his hardest to contain a massive smirk. “I thought he was landing at Manchester but he finally landed in London. The story was out for such a long time that I thought he was going to go to Manchester, but then suddenly in 24 hours [he joined Chelsea].

“We’ve seen that before on the transfer market. I don’t know what happened exactly.”

When asked if the player was ever on his list, Wenger answered as you would expect.

“No. We have many players on the flanks. Many, many players.”

We can only be thankful that we have not been in the situation that Manchester United find themselves in, with players heavily linked with a move to the club ending up elsewhere as soon as interest arises.

In recent years fans from Old Trafford have been looking forward to welcoming Cesc Fàbregas, Thiago Alcantara, Nicolas Otamendi and now Pedro while Ivan Gazidis and Dick Law have secured Arsenal targets like Mesut Özil and Alexis Sánchez.

‘Ed Woodward, what the **** do you do?’