Rob Holding has signed a new contract, keeping him at Arsenal until 2024, less than a year after it looked like his time in north London could be coming to a close.
The 25-year-old looked set to leave the club last summer, with the Gunners centre-back linked with a loan move to Newcastle United.
However, the former Bolton man has now extended his deal at the Emirates until 2024 with the option of a further year on top of that.
Holding has now started all of the Gunners' last 11 Premier League games, despite the addition of two new central defenders in the last year as Gabriel and Pablo Mari arrived.
William Saliba has made another move out on loan to Ligue 1 following his £30million arrival from Saint-Etienne in the summer of 2019, with the French defender revealing Mikel Arteta had told him he was not ready for the Premier League.
Mikel Arteta spoke recently of Holding's importance to the team following his return from a serious knee injury suffered in December 2018.
"It was almost a year ago when he came back from his injury," Arteta told reporters.
"He had a period when he did not play and then he played against Leeds at home. When you compare how he has evolved from there to now, in a year’s time, it is incredible.
"It is down to him, how professional he is, how much he wants to learn, how much he puts into every training session and then his character and his personality.
"He is growing in every aspect. I am really happy with him. It is true that in the summer he came to me because we had a large amount of central defenders and he was not sure about how many minutes he was going to have.
"We stopped him going anywhere because we knew he was going to be an important player for us."
