Arsenal: Can Sokratis come out and play again, please?

Arsenal’s defense is a problem. But the solution, who was becoming the solution, is sitting on the bench. Can Sokratis please come out and play again?

It’s always easy to look at things in hindsight, and perhaps that’s what we’re doing by saying that Sokratis really should have started for Arsenal against Crystal Palace. All in all, it wasn’t even the defense’s fault that the win streak ended. Both goals were from penalties.

That said, one penalty was a poor, poor tackle from Shkodran Mustafi, questionable though the call was. And while we’re on the subject, why can’t Mustafi not be an enigma? Why do his fantastic plays have to be offset by completely bewildering ones?

But I digress. We know who and what Mustafi is. That is why Sokratis was purchased in the first place, because Mustafi, and the rest of this defense, was no convincing. And while it took Sokratis a little bit of time to get settled, he still began to establish himself as perhaps the only centerback on this club that wasn’t susceptible to buffoonery.

Right now, the only thing I want this defense to have is the ability to not shoot themselves in their collective foot. Mustafi is a walking question mark and Rob Holding hasn’t shown me enough yet to earn full confidence.

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He’s looked good, arguably even better than Mustafi, but he hasn’t been good enough, and that mainly comes from questionable decision-making off the ball. Still, the promise is there, so I don’t mind the growing pains all that much.

In case you can’t see what I’m getting at, let me just say it – Mustafi needs to have a seat. A long overdue seat. The skill is there, sure it is, but let someone else take the reigns for a bit. Let Sokratis take his no-nonsense decision-making and put it next to Holding. It’s a partnership we haven’t seen yet and, right now, anything we haven’t seen has a pretty good chance of being better than what we have seen.

Maybe the point in sitting Sokratis was to give him an extra rest coming off his injury. We really shouldn’t have needed him to get past Crystal Palace, honestly, but turns out we did.

Whatever the case, Sokratis needs to come back out and play. He needs to be starting. I don’t care who it’s for, but let him be the solution he was shaping up to be.