Arteta, who arrived at Everton on an initial six-month loan in January 2005 before making a permanent £2million move from Real Sociedad, is expected to put pen to paper on his lucrative new contract today.

The midfielder had told the Goodison board he would understand any decision to move him on given the player is at the peak of his market value.

But the manner in which such suggestions were dismissed out of hand convinced Arteta he was right to stay put.

“I knew everything from the end of last season about the other clubs,” he said. “The club knew about it and we just had to deal with it.

“I said to the club ‘maybe this is a good chance for you. I’m 28 years old, maybe you want to move me on and get a lot of money’.

“But they said ‘no, we don’t want that and we want you to stay here for as long as possible’ so we agreed the contract.

“There was never a chance I was going back to Spain. People said things about how I wanted to go back because of personal things but that wasn’t true. I always wanted to stay in England.”