Arsenal Vs FC Vorskla: Centre-backs most interesting position

Arsenal host FC Vorskla on Thursday night as their Europa League campaign gets underway. For me, the most interesting position to watch will be the centre-backs, namely, Konstantinos Mavropanos and Rob Holding.

FC Vorskla’s Thursday night trip to the Emirates will be Arsenal’s first midweek match of the season. Because of the way the fixtures play out, early in the year, every club starts with a gentle, one-game-a-week schedule. That means that squad rotation is not nearly as necessary and managers can play the same starting XIs repeatedly.

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For the Gunners, that has meant that some players have seen very limited playing time so far this season. At four different positions, Unai Emery has played the same individual for every single minute of the season so far. In fact, only 17 players have played a minute of football this year, with only 14 of those making at least one start. This has been a very settled team.

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So when Vorskla take to north London in the first Europa League match of the season, it will provide a first glance — or a more extensive second glance — at many of the players that could yet feature prominently under Emery throughout the course of the year.

In these early matches of the competition in which results are fairly secure and the only aim is to ease through to the knockout stages without any injuries, the most interesting aspect of the matches is to watch positions that have younger or less experienced players playing. Consequently, there is, for me, not a position that I am more looking forward to watching on Thursday than centre-back.

Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Shkodran Mustafi have both played every minute of every game so far. That has completely obliterated any opportunities for their younger deputies to impress. As such, this is a rare chance to start.

Both Konstantinos Mavropanos and Rob Holding have enough ability to suggest that they have bright careers ahead of them. Although there have been moments where their inexperience, lack of positional awareness, odd decision-making or youthful naivety has been exploited by the opposition, there have also been performances and series of performances that portray their natural skill for the position.

The problem for the pair is that they need to play to improve. Many of their mistakes are not physical or technical ones. It is not a lack of ability that is holding them back. It is the mental errors that are so much more important for defenders in comparison to attackers. And they, predominantly, can only be ironed out and addressed if mistakes are allowed to be made such that they can be learned from.

If both players aren’t playing, however, how can they make mistakes and grow in their understanding of the game? Training with the first team is all well and good, but real development and progression comes from playing regular, competitive football at the highest possible level, something that neither Mavropanos nor Holding are currently doing.

It will be fascinating to see how they deal with starting on Thursday, not that it’s alien to them, just that they haven’t done it yet this season. If either can have a positive performance then they could perhaps put pressure on Mustafi and Sokratis who haven’t exactly been perfect up to now. I, for one, will be watching very closely indeed.