Arsenal: Sokratis absolutely not a hill worth dying on

Arsenal’s defense is a mess, and while Sokratis isn’t completely to blame, there is a lot to be gleaned from Unai Emery’s reliance in him.

There were a lot of things—and there have been a lot of things—that are glaring failures on Unai Emery’s record at Arsenal. But the biggest and most shocking hill that Unai Emery appears willing to die on is his reliance on the bumbling Sokratis.

We’ve seen it all year, but we saw it worse than ever against Southampton. Sokratis has been the king of individual mistakes. he holds the ball too long, he can’t play out from the back, he just has so many things that contribute to him being a constant liability.

Yet he has held his starting job the gross majority of the season. The only time he lost out was against Leicester City. In that moment, I was so, so optimistic that Unai Emery had finally figured it out and was ready to make the change that should have been made months ago.

Instead, Sokratis was back out there against Southampton. And instead of proving that the benching had taught him a lesson, he proved that nothing had changed.

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In the worst offense of all, Unai Emery made a substitution at half time, sending on Nicolas Pepe for a defender in an attempt to inspire some more attacking innovation. With a yellow card and shaky moments already under his belt, it would have made sense to take off Sokratis.

Unai Emery didn’t. He took off Calum Chambers.

Sokratis repaid the favor by making more mistakes in the second half and nearly gifting another goal to Southampton.

This has been a cut and dry issue from the moment Sokratis started giving goals away back in Week 2. You don’t keep playing a guy that keeps biting you in the arse. You have other options that haven’t provided nearly the amount of mistakes that the Greek has. It’s ludicrous that I’m still here after matchweek 13 talking about why Sokratis shouldn’t be starting. How is that the case?

Unai Emery has made some questionable decisions. Mesut Ozil, Nicolas Pepe, Granit Xhaka, Lucas Torreira. All of these has some smidgen of logic behind the decision itself.

But Sokratis? There is no logic there. None at all. The worst part is that it is such an easy thing for literally everyone except Unai Emery to see. So why can’t he see it?