Arsenal: What took so long with Konstantinos Mavropanos?

Arsenal’s defense has needed help for awhile, so why has it taken them so long to give Konstantinos Mavropanos the chance to shine?

He’s the man of the hour, or week, maybe the month, depending on how May goes. His name is Konstantinos Mavropanos, and for an Arsenal fanbase starved of the confidence needed in our defense, this young man has become the second coming of Tony Adams. Only Greek.

When Mavropanos was signed in early January, people were excited by the link to Sven Mislintat, but overall they were more or less disenchanted that he was a young prospect without any modern day relevance.

He was expected to go out on loan to get some first team experience. Only he didn’t. Arsene Wenger was so impressed by the young man that he kept him around.

Right there, right when the loan never happened in February, many were expecting to see him feature, at least when the Premier League got out of hand, which happened all of two or so weeks later.

Mavropanos never did. He continued to rock out at the U23 level to rave reviews and continued to put to question just how much we needed defensive help, as we might well have been able to find everything we needed in the system.

But still, he never found his way to the pitch.

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Here we are (or there we were, rather) on April 29th, in matchweek 35, and Mavropanos got shoved into the firing lines at Old Trafford, with the majority of the first team stars resting up for the Europa League semi-final second leg.

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And he did superb. Bolstered by a series of poor defensive efforts by his senior-level team mates all year long, the young Greek put in one of the more promising individual (and team) efforts that we’ve seen. His combination with an equally impressive Calum Chambers was solid, it was undaunted and it was sturdy.

I hate to be nit-picky, but why haven’t we tried this sooner? We’ve got three more Premier League matches, all of which Mavropanos should be starting in, but even then, we won’t have a good read on how ready he is.

One of my biggest fears, and this applies across all positions, is that we go buy someone that blocks a prospect who is ready to do the same thing that new acquisition would do.

For instance, we are linked with Sokratis. Great. But could Mavropanos be just as effective with a decade more time to give to the club? It’s not such a crazy sentiment, but it is when you’re basing it off of one match.

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We need more Mavropanos, and it sucks that we don’t have the time to provide for that.

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