Gabriel’s former team-mates at Villarreal have only praise for Arsène Wenger’s new signing and believe he will not only quickly adapt to the Premier League but also take charge of Arsenal’s defence

The last time Gabriel Armando de Abreu posed for a team photograph at Villarreal, he squatted down in the front row dressed all in black while everyone else wore yellow. In his hands was a ceramic yellow submarine, a memento of his time at the Madrigal. It had been brief – he was leaving less than 18 months after he had arrived from Brazil for €3.5m (£2.6m) – but he had left his mark. He said goodbye before last weekend’s match against Levante, Villarreal’s 18th unbeaten, and supporters applauded him on to the field, chanting his name as he joined his now former team-mates lining up before the cameras.

There were tears. Gabriel’s voice cracked and an interview broke off. “It’s a bit difficult,” he said, swallowing hard. “That’s life: one day you’re in one place, the next you’re somewhere else.”

That somewhere else is London; Gabriel joined Arsenal for a fee that could rise to almost €19m. “It’s a bit different to [the Valencian town of] Benicàssim,” grins the Villarreal striker Denis Cheryshev after Thursday’s game against Getafe. “I’d find it hard, the weather especially, and it might be difficult at first but he’s ready and I’m sure we’ll see him playing very well, very quickly.”

If Arsène Wenger’s signing of Gabriel seemed to many to have come from nowhere, not so his team-mates. “I don’t know if you have been watching us this season,” Cheryshev says, “but we have been keeping clean sheets almost every game and those who watch him every week, those of us who train with him especially, were not surprised. He’s had a spectacular season. Gabriel going [on a big transfer] is no utopia.”

Gabriel had admitted at the start of this season: “Last season was new for me, a year of adaptation more than anything else. This year will be better.” He was right, too. The qualities were always there – aggressive, strong, tall – and the improvement has been as swift as he is. Villarreal have the best defensive record in La Liga outside Real Madrid and Barcelona and until his departure Gabriel was the only outfield player to play every game, starting 18 of 19, the same number as he had played in the previous season.

“He’s very quick, well-positioned, covers a lot of ground and is tough too,” Villarreal’s Gerard Moreno says. “He reads the game well, judging where players are going, and then has the speed to get there before them. And even if he made mistakes, or if players got free [at first], he had the speed to recover.”

Mistakes become less frequent too. “Humble and hard working” may be the standard response from footballers asked about their team-mates but with Gabriel it gets repeated so often and in a tone so convincing that it no longer sounds like a platitude. “He’s such a good, good, person: quiet, reserved, completely dedicated,” one member of staff says.

People at the club describe the defender who arrived in August 2013 as “raw”. Video sessions with the manager, one on one, were constant and long: more than an hour at a time spent in front of a screen together. Marcelino García Toral, the coach, was obsessive about it, guiding him through positioning, decision making, reading of the game, the coordination required. Gabriel listened and learnt. “He did everything he was told,” staff say. “Literally everything.”

“He’s a kid who has really progressed,” Marcelino says. “It was hard to adapt because football in Brazil is very, very different to football in Europe, tactically, in particular. He was poco trabajado, he’d not really been worked on. But thanks to an impeccable attitude, sacrifice and consistency, the fact that he worked steadily every day, he improved a lot.He understands the game. He’s a great professional. He earned this; he deserves it.

“He’s very strong, very fast, good in the air. He’s tremendously dynamic and intense in the way he defends,” Marcelino continues. “He also strikes the ball cleanly, brings it out from the back well, and he can play on both the right and left.”

Nor does the manager think the jump to English football will be a problem. “The leap is much bigger from Brazil to Spain than Spain to England and he has already been through that adaptation [process]. The Spanish league is a bit more tactical than the Premier League, there are fewer aerial battles and there are fewer tackles, but the levels are similar. I don’t think it’s especially difficult. Most players who go there from here adapt immediately. He’s young, 24, and leading the defence has to come bit by bit, but he’ll do well.”

Moreno says: “He has the qualities to be a success there. In fact, I think he could be even better there than he is here, because of that speed.” Cheryshev agrees: “People I know who have played in England say it is faster, more open, a bit more end-to-end. He won’t have a problem with that. He’s young and will keep growing. Why shouldn’t he become the leader of their defence? On top of that, there are lot of Spanish speakers there, so that will help.”

Santi Cazorla still keeps in touch with friends at Villarreal and will be among the first points of contact at Arsenal. Wenger admits that Gabriel does not speak a word of English. Not yet, but he will learn. “We’ll teach him to say ‘offside’,” Wenger smiled.