Declan Rice has joined Arsenal from West Ham United, with the Gunners now confirming their new midfielder’s shirt number in Mikel Arteta’s squad.

Declan Rice has now completed his move to Arsenal, joining for a club-record transfer fee of £100m plus £5m in potential bonus payments.

A long time coming, Arsenal fans are certainly excited to see their new star in action during pre-season.

The midfielder has been assigned the number 41 with the Gunners, just as he wore with his former club.

So far in his senior career, Rice has worn the number 41 throughout his time with West Ham’s first team.

That was the number he was assigned as an academy player stepping up to the senior side, and he chose to hang onto it despite becoming a key starter for the Hammers.

Rice isn’t the only player to hang onto the number he first received as a young player, with Trent Alexander-Arnold doing the same thing at Liverpool. Many years after his debut, he still wears the number 66.

But Arsenal have generally avoided handing numbers above 35 to senior players.

Those numbers are usually reserved for the academy players, allocated in alphabetical order. So Tim Akinola received the number 36 last season, Ryan Alebiosu received the number 37, and so on.

This occasionally led to disappointment, with Alex Iwobi one notable example of a player who wanted to hold onto their academy number (45), but was forced by Arsenal to change to a senior squad number.

The Gunners have clearly decided to break that rule for their club-record signing, so he can keep his old number.