If there is a legend which Samir Nasri is going to have to live down at Arsenal then it is that of Robert Pires. He neither wants, nor needs direct comparison to a player who earned a reputation as one of the cult heroes of the Arsene Wenger era.

But because Nasri also arrived from Marseille, because his vision, movement and skills are all evocative of the footballing D'Artagnan who now plays for Villarreal, Arsenal's newest French prodigy is just going to have to live with it.

The game-breaking goals he's scored against both West Brom and Twente, plus the quick-footed skill which catches the eye as he skips past challenges, mean the Gunners faithful already look to this budding talent as a potential saviour.

But Nasri is at pains to stress how important it is that he's allowed to settle and find his feet - even though he thought the experience would be more testing than it has been thus far.

The 21-year-old said: "The boss [Arsene Wenger] warned me from our first discussion that it generally takes six months to adapt when you first arrive in English football and he mentioned both Emmanuel Petit and Robert Pires as examples.

"But I was expecting to find the change more difficult. Certainly there is more physical contact in the Premier League compared to France but the bigger difference is in the sheer intensity of the matches - it's much higher here.

"Arsenal's style of one-touch attacking with constant movement off the ball suits me down to the ground. It's what I've been looking for in my career."

Like many before him, the imperative of winning with style and the need to jockey with Europe's greatest clubs for both domestic and European honours registered immediately on Nasri's arrival at Arsenal. But for him the demands and pressure come with an infrastructure and an atmosphere which have both surprised and impressed him.

He added: "Having moved from Marseille, where I'd been since I was 12 and where I'd experienced practically everything from good times to crises, it was time to be independent from my parents and it was time to progress as a footballer.

"I'm only 21, not 28, and I don't have a great deal of international experience so Arsenal is ideal for my first experiment abroad. I was at a big French club and now I'm with a big European club.

"When you arrive here you get an English mobile phone with all the important numbers already on it and there is a guy on call 24 hours a day if you need him. At training you are presented with your own personalised training programme and the entire experience is on a whole new level.

"Having said that, it's not a factory here. When you eat lunch in the canteen you are eating side by side with the Arsenal ladies team and the club's youth teams.

"Arsenal is a massive European club but it appears it's also a family. As for the comparisons with Robert Pires, I can only say that if you guaranteed to me today that I could have the same career as him, I'd sign up immediately with my eyes closed."