Arsenal: Sokratis has been anything but “underwhelming”

Arsenal spent good money on Sokratis, and he was paying it off. So why hasn’t he been used lately? Because it’s about to get dicier in the long-run.

I wasn’t alone in voicing my annoyance that the defensive “solution” was Sokratis, who even at the budget price of £17m, wasn’t worth it. Arsenal needed a Jerome Boateng, not a Sokratis, but it was Sokratis we had to make use of.

And yet, the more he settled in, the more many of us saw that he was, actually, almost exactly what we needed. He was very no-nonsense, he was a guardian angel for the enigmatic Mustafi, and I would trust him, hands down, with just about any defensive task before I would trust any other centerback.

Then he got hurt and he hasn’t been seen since, despite being healthy, despite having proven himself, despite being a sensible, reliable defender in a sea of the opposite.

The guy is now being listed on such lists as each club’s most underwhelming player. But why? He was a solid addition in the face of criticism and now he might as well not even be here.

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It’s a head scratcher. It doesn’t make any sense. Unai Emery clearly values youth, and Mustafi and Holding are certainly younger. Not to mention that the Mustafi/Holding pairing hasn’t exactly been awful, but it’s not like they’ve been dominating proceedings either. It’s still a flimsy set-up and one that could benefit from the steel of Sokratis.

I posited a guess before that Emery was waiting until either Holding or Mustafi weeded himself out, to make his decision easier, but as the international break rolls to a close, and with the returns of Mavropanos and Koscielny lurking, I don’t know what to classify it as or what to assume the reasoning is behind this.

Again, it’s not like it’s causing any big problems, at least not yet. And maybe, until a big problem happens, nothing will change, but Sokratis earned that starting role, did he not? Let me go ahead and answer that – yes he did.

It wasn’t like Petr Cech, who was given the spot and didn’t necessarily convince. Bernd Leno came in and proved to be every bit his equal. I have yet to see either Mustafi or Holding convince me that they are any better than Sokratis. It’s closer to the opposite.

Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox. I just saw him on a list of underwhelming players and it made me a bit… ticked.