Arsenal: Any excuse to see more of Konstantinos Mavropanos

Arsenal’s fixture with Crystal Palace is in a difficult sandwich, but that just gives us another excuse to see Konstantinos Mavropanos, right?

Now that he has played a whole 58 Premier League minutes, I can’t stop thinking about seeing more, much more, of Konstantinos Mavropanos. Given the odd start for Arsenal against Watford, he looked like the player we all got our hopes up for at the tail-end of last year and, by extension the player we all wanted to see more of.

He was rusty, but so was Laurent Koscielny when he came back after a year of not playing. Yes, it’s been a year since Mavropanos has been able to play, or at least play consistently. And given his youth, I would hope he’d be able to shake off that rust even quicker.

Last year, Mavropanos arrived on the scene in the midst of a troubled defensive campaign and infused all kinds of hope into the future of the defense. He was starting every day, and for just cause.

But it wasn’t enough to make up for the red card and the subsequent one year out of the squad. There’s still tons of optimism, though, that Mavropanos will be a solution, and Crystal Palace provides another fantastic opportunity to gauge just how ready he is.

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With Napoli behind us and Wolverhampton ahead of us, Crystal Palace falls in this dead zone of being a potential breather that we still can’t take it easy for. With Laurent Koscielny‘s injury problems this year, it goes without saying that any break we can give him is a welcome concept. And for as much as we can’t let off against Crystal Palace, this is a great time to let him have the day off and, in his stead, have another excuse to send Mavropanos out there with the first team.

I don’t think this needs to be said, but defense is the No. 1 concern going into this summer, with our only two reliable defenders being over 30 and everyone else a question mark. If Mavropanos can repeat what he did at this time last year and prove that he has the chops to be a Premier League defender, then a huge weight can be lifted before the pressure can even settle in.

And, of course, we will only know that this is the case if he gets the opportunity to start a few matches and, preferably, finish them too.