Arsenal: Shkodran Mustafi needs to discover his best self

Arsenal travel to face Atletico Madrid on Thursday night in the second leg of the Europa League. For success, the enigmatic, mercurial and painfully fluctuating Shkodran Mustafi needs to discover his best self.

Shkodran Mustafi is a horribly frustrating player. If you were to build a centre-half, designing all the traits necessary for a sound and stable defender, you would engineer Mustafi. Strong in the tackle, deceptively quick across the ground, secure technically, athletic aerially. And yet, the Arsenal defender still finds ways to undermine his best work.

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Largely, it his mental shortcomings, his lapses in concentration, his lack of focus and attention when it matters most, his overly-aggressive, sometimes rash decision-making that can leave him or his teammates exposed, that are at fault.

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Because of that, when he does put it all together, as he does have the capability to do, every now and then, he puts in performances of the very highest order. A number of occasions he has been excellent against Chelsea, both in marking Diego Costa and Alvaro Morata in the past two seasons. He has handled Harry Kane comfortably in north London derbies also, and he does enjoy these odd periods of flourishing form in which his confidence is flowing and his mind is clear.

But these moments, these periods, these performances, are infected and diluted by the individual and largely catastrophic errors that he tends to make. His positional sense lets him down. His lack of defensive instincts, often in being slow to sense and react to danger. His loose marking, his disjointed distances with his centre-half partner and surrounding defenders, his moments of madness that utterly befuddle the mind.

So as Arsenal travel to Atletico Madrid in the second leg of their Europa League semi-final, a game that they must win, or at least earn a score-draw in, after the 1-1 draw at the Emirates in the first leg, it is vital that Mustafi, when it matters most, is able to discover his best self.

In that first leg, the Gunners dominated for long periods. Obviously, that came with the help of the numerical advantage after Sime Vrsaljko was sent off in the 9th minute. But they still conceded the all-important away goal thanks to their defensive shortcomings — it should be noted that this was not especially caused by Mustafi, though he did not exactly help proceedings by slipping as Griezmann collected the rebound with David Ospina stranded.

That is the warning for this Arsenal team. Madrid, as a ruthless, clinical, expert counter-attacking team, do not need many opportunities to score. Mustafi, then, along with the rest of the defence, must be acutely aware of and alert to the threat that Diego Simeone’s side pose. While conceding one does not change the scenario all that much, if it means that Arsenal are forced into chasing the game a little, gaps will open up in defensive areas, gaps that Madrid are so brilliantly at exploiting.

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It’s never really known which Mustafi will turn up. He certainly has all the capabilities to be a top-class defender. But his inability to put it all together on a consistent basis is worrying. That said, if he brings his best, he is an excellent defender. Let’s hope he can do just that on Thursday.