The image of Polish goalkeeping took a while to recover from Brian Clough’s famous dismissal of Jan Tomaszewski as “a clown”, but things have changed.

Lukasz Fabianski, who is joining Arsenal from Legia Warsaw for an undisclosed fee, is the latest and potentially the best of a series of impressive goalkeeping exports from Poland to Britain, following Jerzy Dudek, of Liverpool, Tomasz Kuszczak, of West Bromwich Albion, who is on loan to Manchester United, and Artur Boruc, of Celtic.

Fabianski, 22, voted the Polish league’s best goalkeeper for the past two seasons, had a medical in London this week and was kept out of Legia’s league match against Gornik Leczna on Wednesday evening, suggesting that the deal is all but completed.

Auxerre, Benfica and Hertha Berlin were understood to be interested in Fabianski, who has two full caps and a championship medal after helping Legia to the league title last season and who was in the Poland squad at last summer’s World Cup finals. The lure of the Barclays Premiership made the difference, however, even though Jens Lehmann and Manuel Almunia are the established goalkeepers at the Emirates Stadium.

“He had some other options with big clubs in Germany but the offer which Arsène Wenger [the Arsenal manager] gave him probably was the best – and not the financial side of the offer, but the prospect of playing for a big club, maybe not yet but in a season or so,” Dariusz Kubicki, the former Aston Villa defender and Legia coach, said. “When he came to Legia Warsaw he was the second ’keeper behind Artur Boruc and it didn’t take him long [to become No 1]. He’s prepared to wait for his chance and when he gets it, I’m sure he will take it with both hands.”

Until Dudek’s match-winning performance for Liverpool in the penalty shoot-out at the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul, Tomaszewski – whose streaky saves eliminated England from the qualifying competition for the 1974 World Cup finals and prompted Clough’s criticism – was the best-known Polish goalkeeper in this country. Fabianski, though, is part of a new breed.

At Legia he came under the influence of Krzysztof Dowhan, the club’s respected goalkeeping coach, whose prowess can be judged by the fact that three of the four regular goalkeepers in the Poland squad – Boruc, Fabianski and Wojciech Kowalewski – are present or former Legia players. Fabianski is understood to have been recommended to Arsenal by Frans Hoek, the former Ajax and Barcelona coach, who is regarded by many as the world’s foremost goalkeeping coach and who works with Leo Beenhakker, the Poland head coach.

Fabianski had been on Arsenal’s radar before joining Legia. He had a trial with the club several seasons ago while on the books of MSP Szamotuly, an independent academy that specialises in producing goalkeepers. A privately owned school near Poznan funded by local businessmen, it takes promising players from the age of 12, trains them and sells them on to Polish clubs. The involvement of Andrzej Dawidziuk, the national team’s goalkeeping coach, guarantees that goalkeepers are among its leading products. Hoek, coincidentally, is Dawidziuk’s mentor.

Szamotuly also takes care of its students’ development off the pitch. Its success is reflected in Fabianski, who is from the border town of Slubice, across the Oder from Germany, arrived at Szamotuly when he was 14 and is now said to speak several languages.

The school also appears to have regard for players’ emotional development, to judge from Fabianski’s reputation – “likeable, modest, with a grown-up personality and always nice to the press”, according to one regular watcher of Legia. Already ahead of Lehmann in one way, then.