Rob Holding has revealed that Calum Chambers told him ‘it would be great to have you at the club’ when the pair were together on England duty.

Holding signed in the summer from Botlon for a fee believed to be in the region of £2.5m and was then thrust into the starting lineup because of Per Mertesacker’s injury and the delay in signing Shkdoran Mustafi.

He impressed immediately and the more we watched him the more we started to realise how much of a bargain he was, especially when you considered the £47.25m that City paid for Stones.

His time in the first team as a regular was short lived but that’s not a bad thing. He’s still only 21, he needs to be eased into life at this level. It was surely never the plan to use him so much so soon after he was purchased.

In a recent interview, Rob revealed just what happened when he found out Arsenal were interested in him, and how Calum Chambers helped nudge things along.

“There were people with things on Twitter saying, ‘He’s linked here, he’s linked there,’ but I think the concrete one that I knew, that my agent told me, was that Arsenal were interested,” Holding told Arsenal.com.

“I was like, “Wow, Arsenal are interested in me,” so that was one that I wanted to push forward.

“Then when I went away with England in the summer to Toulon, I spoke to Calum Chambers and he said Arsenal is a great club – ‘If it happens for you, it would be great to have you there’.

“It was a bit surreal.

“At the time I was just looking round and seeing my name all over Twitter and places and I’d wake up in the morning and one of my mates had sent me a screen of the newspaper that had linked me with Everton, and I had no idea.

“They were asking me, ‘What’s happening, what’s happening?!’ and I was like, ‘I don’t know, it’s crazy, we’ll just see what happens’.”

Rob is expected to start against Southampton on Wednesday night alongside Gabriel. Should he feature, it will be his third appearance for Arsenal in the EFL Cup – the same number as he has in the Premier League this season.