While all the focus in recent months has been on the contract situations of Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez, Arsenal have been working behind the scenes to secure the futures of players who might be slightly less high-profile, but who are still important cogs in Arsene Wenger's machine.
The announcement on Thursday that Francis Coquelin, Olivier Giroud and Laurent Koscielny have officially extended their stays in North London is good news for the team and for Arsenal fans.
When the Arsenal manager talks about the need for stability, you can almost hear eyebrows being raised, but while it's hardly the most glamorous part of the game, it's no less important for that. The French trio are all important contributors to this Arsenal side and keeping them allows Wenger a platform to build his team in the short-term, and to improve it going forward.
Koscielny has been a sensational player for the Gunners. When you consider that Wenger is often criticised for his lack of defensive focus or an inability to sign good defenders, the 31-year-old makes a lie of that.
There was scepticism when Arsenal paid £10 million to Lorient for a player nobody had heard of in the summer of 2010, and a red card on his debut didn't help, but over time he has developed into one of the finest central defenders in Europe.
He is now the mainstay at the heart of the Arsenal defence, and such is his quality that he improves those around him. Both Shkodran Mustafi and Gabriel have played very well with him this season, but the pair looked much less assured when they were brought together in his absence last weekend against Preston North End in the FA Cup.
Also, with club captain Per Mertesacker sidelined through injury, Koscielny has taken on the extra responsibility of wearing the armband with aplomb. While he'll never be the archetypal shouty captain, he leads by example, and his performances this season have been generally excellent.
Coquelin, meanwhile, continues his almost meteoric rise from a player deemed practically expendable to one of Wenger's most trusted. He is asked to do a very specific job in midfield, sometimes one that seems at odds with his skillset, but he is a tenacious terrier in the centre of the park.
Arsenal have, over the last number of years, always felt a bit soft in that area, and there's no doubt he gives them some bite that has been missing. Some harbour doubts over his impact on the team's style, but when he does what he does well, it helps Arsenal play on the front foot.
As for Giroud, he has underlined his importance to the team in recent weeks with a clutch of vital goals and assists. A player who is unfairly the lightning rod for criticism when things didn't go well, there were calls last summer for Arsenal to cash in. Even earlier in this campaign when he wasn't playing, he played down talk of a January departure and said he wanted to fight for his place at the club.
The issue has never been just Giroud. It's always been more about what Arsenal had to help them through those periods when the goals dry up. Arsene Wenger knows the player well and knows what he can expect from him, but to have never really had any credible back up for him in all the years he's been at the club is the bigger problem, not Giroud himself.
Think back a couple of seasons when Yaya Sanogo was his main back-up striker. With no disrespect to Sanogo, that's a ludicrous situation for a club like Arsenal to have been in. Giroud has always needed someone to share the goal-scoring burden, and this season with Sanchez, Ozil, Theo Walcott, Alex Iwobi and even Lucas Perez doing their bit, it's allowed Arsenal to get the best out of him.
So, focus will likely return to the 'stars' now that these deals have been announced, but it is players like Koscielny, Giroud and Coquelin who help those guys really shine. Keeping them is a positive step while they convince Ozil and Sanchez to do likewise.