Arsenal: Sokratis not a disaster, which is good

Sokratis is four games into his Arsenal career. Thus far, he hasn’t been a disaster, which, I’ll be honest, is better than I expected.

I was hardly enamoured when Arsenal decided that a 30-year-old centre-back who was a part of a leaky Bundesliga defence and was hardly known for his athleticism or technical ability would be the individual to solve their defensive problems. The £17 million signing was not the most popular.

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Sokratis Papastathopoulos, however, has not quite been the disaster that many, myself included, feared he might be. I wasn’t necessarily predicting him to be a disaster, but I certainly thought that it was within the realms of plausibility for how the signing would play out.

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And, to his credit, Sokratis hasn’t been a disaster. That’s not to say that he’s necessarily been good. I would argue that he’s been perfectly ‘fine’. Whether that’s good enough for what Arsenal expect is another question, but it is certainly better than I believe he could have been. But that does not mean that the defensive problems that Sokratis arrived to solve have been solved. They haven’t.

However, it would be unfair to pin such defensive vulnerabilities on Sokratis and the centre-halves alone. They have been largely exposed with overly advanced full backs, lacked protection from a midfield that still struggles to offer structure and compactness in front of the back four, and have seen themselves exploited by the opposition on the counter-attack.

Sokratis is certainly not afraid to make his voice known. He is the key organiser of the defence, certainly. But then this is a team that hasn’t looked all that organised. That may not be Sokratis’ fault entirely. There are difficulties in adapting to Unai Emery’s new scheme. But, again, Sokratis hasn’t been the answer to the problems.

Whether he was ever going to be is a very different question. I never believed that Sokratis would be anything more than a stop-gap option at a problem position that is extremely inexperienced and inconsistent. And, in all fairness to him, that is precisely what he has been.

Will he be the long-term anchor of the defence? No, almost certainly not. He has likely two more years as a starting option. But he can still be average to good for a short period and help Arsenal limp through at a position that has been hugely detrimental in the past, and that does have some value.

Sokratis has not been the disaster that I feared he might. He has also not been the solution that the club perhaps hoped he would be. He’s been decent, and that’s still very useful indeed.