Well, those who had their money on Arsenal guessed right. Andrei Arshavin signed a deal with the gunners until 2012.

The transfer amount varies from € 13 to € 16.5 million euros at this point.

But one thing seems almost certain, he will wear the number 23 in red-white gunners uniform.

“On the one hand I think Zenit made it clear that quality players from Russia will be sold at an adequate price and not for pennies. On the other hand I believe that the negotiation process should not go to such an extreme timeline where the parties are forced to hold on until the last second of the last hour,” Evgeny Ginner, President of CSKA Moscow football club, said.

Andrey Arshavin could make his dream debut for Arsenal as early as February 8.

The gunners will be playing their city rivals Tottenham Hotspur, the club which recently acquired another Russian star Roman Pavlyuchenko.

Pavlyuchenko has already won the hearts of his team's fans, but Arshavin still has to walk that road.

“Andrey is the man, who has a great desire to try himself on a new – higher – level. I know him for a long time. If it was the money he wanted he would have stayed at Zenit. But his dream was to play football in a different atmosphere. I wish him all the luck,” Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s sports minister and former Zenit president, said at a media-conference on Tuesday.

Communists call Arshavin a traitor

While most Russian fans are happy for Andrey Arshavin, who has fulfilled his dream, the Communist Party of Saint Petersburg has called the player a traitor for signing a contract with a club from a NATO country.

“This is a moral betrayal, the actual escape from his home city of Leningrad [Saint Petersburg’s name during Soviet times] and the team beloved by all of the citizens in the days of a grave economic crisis, when the audience go short on food to get tickets for Zenit matches,” Sergey Malinkovich, Chairman of the party’s Central Committee, said.

“Arshavin exchanged his talent for cash and will now lackey Gordon Brown at private parties,” he added.

Malinkovich also encouraged the fans to forget about the traitor and find new heroes who were “modest and with dignity”.