Arsenal: If you belittle Shkodran Mustafi, you have to praise him too

Arsenal matched attacking ineptitude with a near-masterclass on defense, and Shkodran Mustafi was at the heart. So all you haters, give him some credit.

Arsenal‘s match against Burnley was a solid wash. For all the awfulness that the attack brought, the defense countered with some kind of brilliance. Which may seem kind of ridiculous seeing as how we were anchored by Shkodran Mustafi and David Luiz.

Last summer, I made the case that we didn’t need David Luiz because we already had Mustafi. Two error prone defenders who couldn’t defend very well. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Let alone having them on the same team. And on the same pitch.

But for anyone out there that is quick to belittle Shkodran Mustafi, myself included, we have to do our due diligence as fans and heap as much praise on him for a stalwart performance as criticism for a poor performance.

Make no mistake about it, Shkodran Mustafi was tremendous against Burnley. And I mean really special. Burnley bossed us all over the place in the air. The only person who gave us any hope was our special German.

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But he did so much more than that. He was fantastic in man-marking, in tracking runs, in holding his position and, most importantly, in not getting beaten over the top. His major Achilles heel.

He was so good that he made David Luiz look the lesser of the two. Normally, that wouldn’t be saying much, but Luiz was pretty good himself. He only had one glaring mistake, when he got spun around in the goal that never crossed the line. (So I guess I shouldn’t call it a goal.)

This is what Mustafi could be. Key word should be obvious there. But he really could be. He is such a physically capable defender, and an underrated one. (Yup, I said it.) He just always undoes all his hard work with singular moments of mental collapse. Or getting completely undone by a single ball over the top.

That’s the thing though, he’s reliable for 86, 87 minutes of good quality football. But so often he makes a mistake or two that makes those 86, 87 minutes irrelevant. It seems like such an easy fix, but as we’ve learned, it just isn’t.

What does this all mean? Probably nothing. But I just figured that if we’re going to be so quick to criticize him, we should be just as quick to praise him for a job well done. And this was a job well done.