Arsenal: Sokratis has even less to do with Shkodran Mustafi

Arsenal have finally announced the signing of Sokratis from Borussia Dortmund and everyone wants to know who is effected. Well, not Shkodran Mustafi.

Arsenal‘s defense has received its first (assuming there will be more) jolt in the form of Greek defender Sokratis, yet another product of Sven Mislintat tapping into his old digs at Borussia Dortmund.

The first question that should be asked regarding this move is who is affected. The natural inclination is to see him as a solution to the errors this defense accumulated last season.

That would mean that Laurent Koscielny and Shkodran Mustafi stand to lose the most from Sokratis arrival. At least on the surface.

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But I’m actually not very convinced that this is the case. Mustafi was a font of personal mistakes last season, but as he is still going in to his prime years, and as we have seen how talented he can be, it’s unlikely that Mustafi is the one that is being outright replaced.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and probably many more times to come), Sokratis is here to replace Koscielny. Perhaps only while Koscielny is hurt, perhaps after. But for the time being, that is all he is here to do.

Yet, for all intents and purposes, Koscielny should have been dropped after last season anyway, so it’s not like Sokratis is here to change the world.

And Mustafi won’t find his world changed too much either because, like Koscielny, he should have been dropped regardless of who came into the team this summer. He wasn’t good enough, and if we want to shore up that back line, we have to iron out the mistakes.

The threat to Mustafi is not coming in the form of Sokratis, it is coming in the form of Calum Chambers. As it stands, Mustafi is not a veteran presence. Not really, anyway. Koscielny was, now Sokratis is.

The up and coming, dynamic defender was Mustafi, but it is now – or should now be – Chambers, as he has far less mistakes to his name and his promise is catching up to, if it has not already surpassed Mustafi.

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Sokratis is going to solidify things more than he is going to shake anything up. And that’s a good thing, don’t worry.