Signed, sealed, delivered

This week our statistician analyses Arsenal's signings since the year 2000.

Mesut Ozil is the 83rd permanent signing Arsenal have made since the turn of the century and the seventh player to have joined from La Liga in that time.

The talented German international moved from Real Madrid, becoming the 26th midfielder and seventh 24-year-old to join Arsenal in the past 13 years.

Arsenal have made a new signing once every 60.2 days on average since the beginning of the 21st century, and four in 2013 following the acquisitions of Nacho Monreal, Yaya Sanogo and Mathieu Flamini.

Loan players are not included in this list, therefore Emiliano Viviano is omitted, as are the likes of Michal Papadopulos, Julio Baptista and Yossi Benayoun, as they were all signed on loan forms. Alex Song and Mart Poom signed permanent deals after completing a loan spell.

Those who signed professional forms while already affiliated to the Club are also not included in this analysis, so Jack Wilshere, Kieran Gibbs, Johan Djourou, Cesc Fabregas, Nicklas Bendtner and Wojciech Szczesny etc are not counted here, as they all joined the Club's academy before turning professional.

Of the 83 players signed this century, 26 (31 per cent) were midfielders, 25 (30 per cent) defenders, 21 (25 per cent) forwards and 11 (14 per cent) goalkeepers.

Ozil is the fifth German to sign for the Club since 2000, following the arrivals of Jens Lehmann, Per Mertesacker, Thomas Eisfeld and Lukas Podolski.

He is the first 24-year-old to sign since Gervinho in July 2011 - 55 (66 per cent) of the Club's signings in the 21st century have been 24 or younger.

Since the January transfer window was introduced to the Premier League in the 2002/03 season, Arsenal have bought 15 players in this 'window', the very first of whom was Guillaume Warmuz - a French goalkeeper who never played a first-team match for the Club.

In fact, of the 83 players listed, 12 (14 per cent) never played a single minute of first-team action for the Gunners - though this does include the likes of Joel Campbell, Wellington and Deyan Iliev, who are all still at the Club - and of course Ozil.

The 15 winter signings account for 18.1 per cent of the total transfers Arsenal have made since the current transfer deadline format was introduced.

The 2002/03 season was also the first to impose an August 31 transfer deadline. Since then, the Gunners have bought 14 players on either the winter or summer deadline day - including Ozil. The previous one was Monreal in January.

As August 31 fell on a weekend this year, the deadline was moved to September 2, and Ozil therefore became the first player to join in September since Greek defender Stathis Tavlaridis 12 years ago.

The previous permanent signing before Ozil was Flamini, who appears twice on the table below, having originally joined aged 20 in 2004.

Lehmann and Sol Campbell are the other men who appear on the list twice, having both re-signed in the past 13 years.

Three of Arsenal's last six signings arrived from Spain's La Liga (Santi Cazorla, Monreal and Ozil), while the Bundesliga has also supplied three players over the past three seasons (Mertesacker, Eisfeld and Podolski).

Only one player in the past five years has joined from a fellow Premier League side (Mikel Arteta from Everton) but overall 11 (13 per cent) of the players on the list joined Arsenal from another English club.

The main source of Arsenal players since 2000 though has been the French leagues. In this time 19 (22.9 per cent) of Arsenal's signings have come from French clubs, the most recent example being Sanogo, who joined from Auxerre.

He was the third player this century to move to Arsenal from Auxerre (following Abou Diaby and Bacary Sagna). The other clubs to supply three players to the Gunners during this period are Marseille, Borussia Dortmund and Sao Paulo.

Overall the 83 signings came from eight different sources/countries, and represent 37 different nationalities. Eight of the signings (including Flamini) joined Arsenal as free agents.

Stats correct as at September 3, 2013