Arsenal: Konstantinos Mavropanos another thing Sokratis can get right

Sokratis has been such a pleasant surprise for Arsenal this season, and his positives can keep flowing if he is right about Konstantinos Mavropanos.

I was one of the many fans that wasn’t very enthused about Arsenal‘s choice of defensive help – Sokratis Papastathopoulos. It was clearly just picking on the Mislintat-Dortmund connection, plucking another want-away Dortmund man from their ranks. He had lost his spot, been exposed, and struggled in recent history, which is why he was even available at all.

Right from the off, though, we at least got a taste for the kind of defender he was – he was mean, and he didn’t stand for anything. You flop, he’ll make you wish you hadn’t. You challenge him physically, he’ll… also make you wish you hadn’t.

He was just a nasty guy, the kind you love to have, but hate to play against, and the Gunners have far too few of those kinds of players, particularly when it comes to the defensive side of things.

But we got a taste for one the previous year. Konstantinos Mavropanos exhibited a lot of the same traits in his early days at the Emirates as his countryman, Sokratis. He tackled people, not just to win the ball, but to remind them that they shouldn’t come anywhere near him.

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The Greek connection has not been talked about much, but Sokratis clearly has his opinion on this connection, and it’s all sound ing pretty good, because the senior thinks the junior can be the better of the two.

“Dinos can become much better than me and it will be bad for him to have Papastathopoulos as a ceiling,” Sokratis said, as quoted by the Mirror.

Plenty of fans have been dying to see Mavropanos back in the starting XI, or just back on the pitch at all, given how well he ended out last year (before the red card), but after missing half the year due to injury and now being excluded from the Europa League roster for BATE Borisov (yes, I’ve learned), the opportunities have not been forthcoming, which cast a lot into doubt.

Sokratis doesn’t talk much. He speaks with his actions, and he has thus been right about a lot of things this season, but the most important thing to be right about is this.

Mavropanos can fix things. He can be a solution. And after seeing how good Sokratis has been, to think that Mavropanos can be even better? Well, that would be pretty swell.