Arsenal vs Chelsea: What’s next for Shkodran Mustafi?

Arsenal defended brilliantly against Chelsea, and they did it with Shkodran Mustafi on the bench. This couldn’t have worked out any better.

In all the time that Shkodran Mustafi has been at Arsenal, I honestly can’t think of a time that either Wenger or Unai Emery willingly put him on the bench for an extended period. It’s as if they all saw what some of us see, that there is so much talent in him that he just has to pan out eventually.

But against Chelsea, Emery sat Mustafi and rolled out a back four with the centerback partnership of Sokratis and Laurent Koscielny and it was, in a word, extravagant. With the odd hiccup or two, these two experienced defenders hardly put a foot out of place.

They did everything you could have asked of them on the ground and in the air, Koscielny nearly had a brace, Sokratis had a brilliant assist and could be seen celebrating a goal-line tackle against Willian as if he had scored a goal himself.

No one expected a clean sheet in this one, yet thanks to some fantastic defending, that is exactly what we got.

And we got it without the regular, Shkodran Mustafi.

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It couldn’t have worked out any better. While I am finding my confidence in Mustafi shaking more than usual this season, I have to admit that the best thing for him is to see his team play fantastic defensive football without him.

Not only was it physically strong, but mentally, our two centerbacks couldn’t have been much more astute. They played with such an intelligence, and it was an intelligence that we were seeing against West Ham as well, honestly, where they didn’t let the ball move between opposing players in the final third. They snuffed it out and got themselves in the way.

For me, the back four has always meant certain doom on the defensive end of things, but we just saw it mean the exact opposite. And that will leave Mustafi wondering what’s next for him because, chances are, this is a formula Emery will want to stick with.

And that’s brilliant. Mustafi has all the talent in the world, he just needs to snap into the game mentally, and like I mentioned already, seeing how well they did without him will have started that process. Options have not been at Emery’s disposal this year on the defensive end, but we have options now.