Arsenal agree a deal worth around £51m with Aston Villa for the England defender Ezri Konsa

Arsenal have agreed a deal worth around £51m with Aston Villa for Ezri Konsa, the England defender they have chased for most of the summer, with terms settled on Thursday after an improved offer including add-ons was accepted.

The 28-year-old had two years left on his Villa contract and has long been interested in a move to the Emirates. He will not, however, feature in Arsenal's opening fixture: the paperwork missed Thursday's midday registration deadline for Friday night's match against Coventry City.

At a glance

• Fee worth around £51m, including add-ons, agreed on Thursday 20 August
• Aston Villa had valued Konsa at £60m and rejected an earlier Arsenal bid of £30m
• Konsa is 28 and had two years remaining on his contract at Villa Park
• He can play at right-back as well as centre-back, which is central to Arsenal's interest
• He missed the Thursday midday deadline to be registered for Friday's opener against Coventry City
• His likely debut is at Aston Villa on Monday 31 August

How the fee moved

Arsenal opened at £30m, a bid Villa rejected while putting a £60m valuation on the player. The gap closed the way these deals usually close, through structure rather than headline value: the accepted offer is worth around £51m with a meaningful portion contingent on add-ons.

For Villa the arithmetic is about more than the number. Konsa was in the final two years of his contract, the point at which a club's leverage begins to drain away, and selling now converts a depreciating asset into cash in a window where they still have time to reinvest.

Why Arsenal wanted him

Konsa's value to Arsenal is versatility. He is a centre-back who can play at right-back without the drop in quality that usually accompanies the switch, and who has done so at international level for England. For a squad expected to compete on four fronts, a defender who covers two positions competently is worth more than a specialist who covers one.

He also arrives with Premier League seasoning that does not need translating. Six years at Villa, following a move from Brentford, have given him a body of work against the league's forwards that no scouting model can fully substitute for.

A complicated pre-season

The timing is less than ideal. Konsa took an extended four-week break after the World Cup and consequently missed Villa's pre-season, including the Super Cup and a friendly against Borussia Moenchengladbach. He arrives at a new club without the conditioning work his new team-mates have already done.

That, more than the missed registration deadline, is the practical constraint on when he plays. A defender who has not completed a pre-season is a defender who needs minutes built up rather than handed over, however much the fee argues for immediate selection.

The fixture that follows

There is a symmetry to the calendar that both clubs will have noticed. Having missed the opener against Coventry City, Konsa's likely first appearance in Arsenal colours is at Villa Park on Monday 31 August, against the club that developed him and has just sold him.

Whether he starts that match is a separate question from whether he is available for it. Managers have a long history of holding a new signing back from precisely this fixture, and the reasoning has as much to do with the state of the player's legs as with sentiment.

What happens next

The medical and the formal registration are the remaining steps, and neither is expected to present difficulty. Villa now have a window in which to reinvest a substantial fee before the deadline, with a hole at centre-back to fill and less time than they would like to fill it in.