Long gone are the days where Arsenal were mocked for their lack of English players.
That first all-foreign matchday squad is more than a decade old (Lehmann, Lauren, Toure, Cygan, Clichy, Pires, Vieira, Edu, Reyes, Bergkamp, Henry, Almunia, Senderos, Fàbregas, Flamini, Van Persie, in case you were wondering), and these days they can boast the likes of Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Danny Welbeck and loanee Jack Wilshere.
Another member of the current first team squad, Alex Iwobi, is a Nigerian international but grew up in London after moving to the UK at the age of four.
And it is Iwobi who was tasked with giving two of his new team-mates language lessons. Not English lessons, though – London slang.
Nils Petter Nilsson/Ombrello/Getty Images
As new arrivals Granit Xhaka and Rob Holding read out words and phrases which are as alien to the Greater Manchester-born defender as they are to the Swiss international midfielder, Iwobi is on hand to ‘translate’.
It begins fairly simply, but you see the cracks begin to appear – the more that Xhaka gets into it, the more Iwobi struggles to hold it together.
Show us one person who didn’t want to hear Xhaka saying ‘that spice is a mad ting’ and we’ll show you a liar.
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