Arsenal have reached an agreement on a £16 million deal to make Sokratis Papastathopoulos their second summer signing under new manager Unai Emery, but his arrival from Borussia Dortmund will not be officially announced until next month.

After already bringing in Stephan Lichsteiner from Juventus earlier this week on a free transfer, Sokratis is the second experienced defender that Emery will add to a squad that has lost Per Mertesacker and which will be without Laurent Koscielny at the start of next season.

Sokratis, who is 29 and had one year left on his contract in Germany, has made 79 appearances for Greece and had played for Dortmund since joining from Werder Bremen in 2013. He previously played in Italy with Genoa and AC Milan and is likely to go straight into Emery's starting team. After Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, he will also be the third player who worked previously with Arsenal's new head of recruitment, Sven Mislintat, at Dortmund.

Aged 34, Lichsteiner will also add experience to Arsenal's back line and, with Champions League qualification the big target next season, the signings do seem to represent a continuation of the January transfer policy which committed considerable wages to proven players who will have only limited sell-on value.