Mohamed Elneny has been telling Arsenal.com just how proud he is to sign for Arsenal – and there’s a whole lot of pride going on.

The Egyptian midfielder, who finally completed his move to the Emirates at the end of last week after work permit and visa issues held up his arrival, gave an interview to the official site in which he speaks of both his personal and nationalistic pride.

“Every player would be so proud to play for Arsenal, if they were Egyptian or not Egyptian,” Elneny said.

“Being the first Egyptian player to play for Arsenal is a great honour and that makes me very happy.

“I am very keen to work hard in the Premier League – that’s for my own reputation and Egypt’s reputation, and to show everyone that Egyptian players are capable of playing very well in the Premier League.

“My father is a football coach back home in Egypt in my town, Almahalah.

“He has a big passion for football and he always made sure that I accompanied him at every match he had been to, and the training sessions as well. He always had the dream and loved to see me as a footballer.

“We would play in the hot weather for more than 10 hours sometimes. That is very normal in Egypt. I was the same as any Egyptian kid because we all have a very strong passion for football. We would head straight to the football grounds as soon as we left the classroom.

“My parents played a big role in creating this passion in me towards football and they encouraged me to play football. It is really nice and important to have such encouraging parents, I am really grateful to them.

“My mother, she would accompany me in every club I went to. Since I was born my parents wanted to see me as a footballer and they are behind this passion I have for football. I sensed their support at home. It’s really nice to see that they love your job or the job you love to do, and that really helped me a lot.”

Playing in Europe for just three years, the 23-year-old has a big step up to take but there’s no reason to doubt, at this point, that he won’t be able to make it.

Perhaps not the big name player that many Arsenal fans were hoping for, we should know by now that names and pricetags means little when Arsene Wenger signs a player and we should just wait and see what he’s capable of delivering.

Give him time to settle and find his feet – he’s a young lad moving to a new club in a new league in a new country.

Let him breath and let the Arsenal coaching staff work their magic.