Arsenal yesterday confirmed the signing of Greek defender Konstantinos Mavropanos. The 20 year old is in London at the moment as the club work out a loan deal, with speculation that he’ll join Werder Bremen for the rest of the season.
It’s a developmental move for the young defender, as Arsene Wenger admits he’s not ready yet for first team action with the Gunners.
Speaking at his press conference on Friday morning, Wenger confirmed both his arrival and his probable departure until the summer.
“He is with us, yes,” he said. “The plan is that he goes out on loan to play somewhere.
“It can be a German club. Where he plays, it doesn’t really matter, but I prefer that he plays at the top level and gains experience.
“He’s 20 years old, so as a central defender he’s not ready to start for us, so it’s important that he gains experience.”
At £2m, it’s not a massive investment, and it’s the kind of move the club have made before to varying degrees of success.
With defensive reinforcement a requirement come the summer, let’s see if the young man can play his way into the first team squad for next season.
Good luck to him.
Sky Sports have some interesting background on him, and why he might have caught our eye – read that here.
Interesting Sky article thanks.
Could be a beast, might not live up to expectations. We’ll only know in a few years though hope it is the first.
I’m not opposed to loaning the guy out, but Holding and Chambers are both 22 years old, and they’re playing for our first team, and there is definitely a case to suggest that both of those guys could do with a loan move. As Chambers was fairly brutal the other night against Chelsea.
I just hope wherever this guy goes out on loan, he gets taught how to defend properly.
Arsenal as it is is the worst place to learn how to defend, so it’s best for him to find his feet elsewhere first.
Thinking about it….
Who’s the last centre back to appear for our academy and actually been really good?
I mean, even the ones from our academy that end up leaving in recent years, seldom make it to a decent enough level (Djourou and Nortdveit are the only 2 I can think of).
Tony Adams..? That’s genuinely the only guy I can think of who came up through the youth ranks at Arsenal as a centre half going on to have a stellar senior career.
Djourou was genuinely brutal at times…
I quite liked David O’Leary too…….
We are rubbish producing Cbacks since Wenger has taken charge.
He’s bought some gems from market but in terms of identifying and developing talent in this position at Academy level, we have had little success.
Remember Djourou and Ignasi Miquel? Not helped by cut price solutions in Silvestre and Squillaci.
Martin Keown came through the ranks at the same time as Tony Adams. Only to leave for Everton andfirst team football before George signed him back again from Aston Villa. Also , we did produce club legend Gus Ceasar…….?
What about at City and United(Evans?)? I can’t even think of any the academy have produced. What about Liverpool? Spurs? Chelsea?(Cahill? Christensen looks good)
I’m only thinking about whos on the club currently.
Cahill isn’t a Chelsea academy product…
Not from our academy per se but we picked up that lad Sol Campbell from some local outfit a few years ago 😉
You know, there was a certain Laurent Koscielny who was virtually unknown before plying his trade at the club to become a world class centre half
Why not buy an establish defender like Liverpool have?? I’m not suggesting we pay £75m but at least buy somebody who can actually defend.
We have no-one at the club qualified to judge whether they can defend or not.
Steve Bould has really not been an asset by Wenger’s side.
I don’t think he has been any more effective than Pat Rice.
Wenger has needed a Carlos Quieroz type character to transform certain aspects of his tactics. That was where Fergie’s practicality eventually ensured 13 titles in similar number of games for United.
“Where he plays, it doesn’t really matter, but I prefer that he plays at the top level and gains experience.” The last half of this sentence is very important, if you ask me. Otherwise it would have been much smarter to work out a deal with PAS Giannina where they could keep him for the rest of the season (or longer). However, Werder Bremen seems to be a smart move – or at least smarter than just throwing him into our starting XI, when our defense is already not exactly stable. It is not like he is too young, but… Read more »
I know this is probably too much like logic, but why are we sending him to Germany?? Surely we should be trying to get him in at a championship club or something to try to get him england-ready??
It worked well for Andreas Christensen. Bundesliga is a more technical game than the Championship, I imagine that’s why. It’s why we’ve sent out players to Holland in recent years, as have Utd and Chelsea. Due to what I’ve read about this guy it would appear he’s probably already outgrown the Eredivisie so I’m guessing Germany is the ideal place for him right now.
German Bundesliga is a better league than the championship.
Kolasinac, Metersecker have all been decent for us from Bundesliga.
I can’t believe you are comparing Bundesliga with Championship
I look forward to watching him play against us when he joins Watford or Newcastle permanently in 2-3 years.
While other teams spend big, we buy a nobody who won’t even play…
Never has it been so obvious we need to sign big players. What I don’t understand is why journalists don’t ask him if we’ll sign any big players.
Considering we’ve a new guy hired for recruitment who has identified big players for Dortmund, maybe let him do his thing? We can’t afford to spend against the likes of Chelsea, City, United or Liverpool (due to the Coutinho money they know they’re getting). I would think this is common knowledge. Yes we need to improve the squad, 100% agree with that, but we can’t forget investing for the future.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and all that.
Arsenal fans were lied to in the summer, the board promised big spending and instead we made a profit selling players…
Now we’re buying nobodies on the cheap
Do you think Messi/Ronaldo etc. started off as a somebody? Jesus, you’re the worst kind of Arsenal fan.
Yes we need to spend money on players, but give them a break when they’re trying to plan for our defense in the future too. 2 million pounds is hardly going to hamper a transfer budget.
Take your negativity about young signings elsewhere.
Why can’t we compete with these clubs? Why are Liverpool at a different level financially than us?
It’s not common knowledge, we are much more successful than the financially in terms of revenue and assets. Don’t think you know what you’re talking about
From whatever I have seen of him in YouTube (I know, not the best place to base your judgement on), he seem like a beast! Strength and aerial prowess is definitely there in the boy. I hope he goes on to challenge for first team in less than 2 years.
Reminds me of Vidic! He’s deceptively quite fast for his size, a quality which will serve him well in England. Good luck!
I REALLY don’t pay attention to YouTube. I know everyone is desperate to see something of a player they don’t know, but I stopped the whole youtube highlights after it got me excited for bloody Gervinho.
Completely agree with you but the desperate fan in me wouldn’t stop until I see something positive in the new boy in town.
The sky people indeed were right in comparing him to Manolas (at least he looks like him) ?
I am guessing the Dortmund guy is already at it!
COYG
Gervinho wasn’t a bad footballer. Hazard called him the best he played with, and after he left us, he did wonders at Roma under Spalletti.
The problem is the manage didn’t play to his strengths in a similar way to Arshavin. Playing both as lone CFs for example was just incorrect. Funnily enough, he was the closest to Hleb with his dribbling ability…just really poor final decisions.
Mustafi, Holding and Chambers all short on pace. Something we should have thought about before letting Gabriel go to Valencia. Hopefully the lad has a bit of pace to him.
Perhaps I am wrong, but Mustafi looks quick pacey to me for a centre half, very much in the Koscielny mold. (And the same sorts of mistakes that Koscielny made in his first seasons.)
Mustafi has made way less mistakes than Koscielny first season.
Koscielny’s first season with us was littered with red cards, own goals and penalties conceded.
You could’ve written whatever you’d wanted – with THAT nickname I’d still thumb you up 😀
Addressing some of the speculations above: The team has to defend as a whole. It´s everybody´s business. When you leave it only to the guy´s at the back you end up with conceding more than 1 goal average (28 so far)
You hit the nail on the head. People tend to focus on the Cbacks (and they are at fault) but reality is the entire team tends to drop focus and not be switched on in defending. Alonso’s goal for instance is nothing new. We have afforded opponents the luxury of players running in from wide areas or midfield into our box without any of our midfield bothering to track them. The Cbacks should have their head on a swivel but there is little chance that Mustafi would be aware of Alonso running in from behind him. In that instance Bellerin… Read more »
Wenger is hedging his bets.
He has two young Cbacks learning the craft (painfully) from within the first team. He punts on another from market (since we have paucity of talent in this area in the academy), and sends him out for some hard knocks (preferably not at our expense) which seems the right thing to do.
However come summer if none of these young hopefuls impress/improve, I think its time to start considering a more ready made solution from market.
The feet of clay approach (and simply throwing more clay at it) is simply too risky.
Hopefully he can Konstaneously improve on loan
I’m sure the lad will Konstantly improve on loan
I’m Koncerned at this.
Just realised the guy is 6ft 4 for starters……that’s one hell of a tick in my book!
plus…if he is signed by Mislintat, i bet he can actually play ball…..the footballing world knows what He can do
With few highlights of his games I watched; his tackle are cards if he doesn’t get the ball. In my opinion give him first team in Europa cup and FA cup. Loan can’t improve him; Let him stay and learn through the bench .