Gabriel scored his first goal in an Arsenal shirt against Bournemouth on Monday and in doing so managed to wriggle his way even deeper into Gooners’ hearts.

The defender is incredibly likable. He’s passionate about his team (*Chelsea flashbacks*) and seems so genuinely grateful for the opportunity to play for us. Not only this, but he’s a bloomin’ decent defender and therefore it’s of no surprise that Wenger has revealed that he completely trusts him.

The Brazilian hasn’t been at Arsenal for too long and at first many, including me, thought he was just going to rot away on the bench until either Per or Kos lost a limb. Even then, we were pretty edgy about how reliable he’d be, especially cold off the bench.

“I played him in a few games since the start of the season,” Wenger said.

“I play him in training with Koscielny, with Mertesacker, we have three central defenders [and] that will be needed, but how I rotate them I haven’t decided yet. I trust him completely. He wants to play more, of course.

“I think as well that he is happy here and I’m sure before the end of the season he will play more games.”

Fortunately, there was no need to worry and every time he’s been called into action, Gabriel has stepped up.

Looking back to the days of Djourou and Squillaci, it makes me so happy to think that we now have three fully capable centre-backs defending our goal.