Arsenal: Shkodran Mustafi the biggest statement on priorities

Arsenal certainly wanted to finish in the top four, but after seeing Unai Emery’s deployment against Leicester City, was it really a priority?

It’s easy to lose oneself in the ugliness that was Leicester City. I recommend taking a walk. Watching some Marvel movies, maybe playing some rugby with friends. Anything that doesn’t involve thinking about Arsenal or football in general.

But if you want to dive back into the match and all of its horror, I’m here for you. And I’m here with an honest question – how much of a priority was the top four? Sure, we wanted to finish in the top four, and it’s hard to move all these players around with two matches a week, but here’s the thing: Even before it all went badly, the starting XI would lead me to believe that Unai Emery was placing a much higher priority on the Europa League all along.

And I only need to say one name to establish why: Shkodran Mustafi.

When Shkodran Mustafi popped up in the back four of a starting XI, with Laurent Koscielny on the bench, my first thought was “Europa League it is then.”

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Because you don’t start Mustafi in any competition that’s a priority, I don’t care how desperate you are. You don’t start him over Konstantinos Mavropanos, or Nacho Monreal, or anyone with two legs. He’s a liability, as we’ve seen all season, with an emphasis on Crystal Palace. Unai Emery saw that too. He wisely left him out against Wolverhampton, but I refuse to believe that a man as intelligent as Emery is going to stick Mustafi in there after Wolverhampton simply because his team needed a change up.

If the team needs a change-up, you put in Mavropanos, or anyone else. You don’t put in the guy who is as susceptible to mistakes as Superman is to kryptonite. It’s senseless.

And I’ll bet that when we run out against Valencia, you will see a much better team than what we saw against Leicester City. Because the Europa League became a priority after Crystal Palace, I’d wage. Emery liked his odds of fighting through Europe’s second best than he did of getting through England’s 7th, 8th and 12th best.

Honestly, I don’t even blame him. If I saw the way this team played in England, I would put my stock in another market as well. Europa League it is!