Arsenal: Why did it have to be Konstantinos Mavropanos?

Arsenal heavily rotated the squad against Burnley, giving Konstantinos Mavropano a necessary start. But he only made it half an hour. Oh, the injustice.

I don’t often get really excited about defenders. Because at the end of the day, a defender isn’t as exciting as a striker or midfielder. They do a relatively dull job if you don’t have a deep appreciation for it, but as Arsenal fans suffering through some pretty awful club defense these past two years, it’s safe to say we are all learning to appreciate it more and more, if we didn’t already.

And Konstantinos Mavropanos was one such guy that gave so much hope in something better yet to come. He closed out last year looking as promising as can be and subsequently missed out on nearly all of this year with a lingering injury.

But against Burnley, the last match of the season, he got the start. In the first few minutes, we saw him try to rip Ashley Barnes to the ground, we saw him aggressively claim possession several times and… we saw him go down hurt in the 30th minute and not return to the match.

Obviously there are players that we would want to get hurt less than Mavropanos. With the Europa League final in two weeks, seeing someone like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang or Laurent Koscielny go down injured would have been far worse.

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Speaking in the long-term, however, I don’t think anyone could have been worse.

In Mavropanos we have a very real solution to our defensive problems. As it stands, he is shaping up to be Sokratis 2.0, which would make me and countless other Gooners quite happy campers. He’s shown what kind of player he is. He’s shown that aggression, those instincts, and even with his mistakes, of which there are some, there isn’t as much growth needed until he’s a clear first-team candidate.

That much is obvious.

Which is why this sucks so hard. Mavropanos was set for a nice cap to the season before going into the offseason and preparing his case for what will prove to be an even more important year next year, and he was unable to accomplish that for the same reason that we’ve seen him so little this year.

As of writing, there was no news how serious the injury was. But that was the story all year – no news. We just knew he was hurt, apparently. It’s not good, but hopefully it can clear up soon enough.