Unai Emery says Dinos Mavropanos can learn from Sokratis as he looks to establish himself as an Arsenal regular.
The young Greek centre-back has been handed two Premier League starts in a row but only made it to half time in both the win over Watford and the defeat to Crystal Palace.
Mavropanos was signed from homeland side PAS Giannina in January 2018 and made three appearances at the tail-end of Arsene Wenger’s time at the club. He had been tipped to challenge our established defenders this campaign but a groin injury kept him sidelined for several months.
Ahead of Wednesday’s trip to Wolves, Emery praised the 21-year-old’s mentality and urged him to take note of his compatriot.
“Papa [Sokratis] is close to Mavropanos and I think he is a good example and can tell him about his experiences to use for him to grow up and improve,” said the Spaniard.
“Mavropanos I think he has a big mentality, his mindset was every day to work to improve his fitness and every training session he showed us what we wanted.
“We want to give him the opportunity to train and sometimes to play because I think he has a good future.
“He started playing last year and started with us in pre-season but after he was injured. He had a lot of time out of the team and now he is training consistently and played at Watford and Palace and for the last matches we can use him to help us with some big performances.”
I’d really like to see him tackle a couple of strikers tomorrow night and play a full 90minutes.
Not if Kos and Papa are both fit, even if we play a back three I suspect Emery would use Nacho. We need to play our best lineup against Wolves. I love Dinos and want to see him play more often, but not tomorrow, not unless it’s an emergency.
Kos has played 4 90mins games in like 12 days or something, he looked like he was feeling it on sunday. Overplaying him is how he developed his tendonitis issues in the first place.
Imagine this means he doesn’t start on Thursday?
Just like the rest of the squad
I’d rather this lad play and make mistakes he learns from than mustafi who continuously makes the same errors over and over then appeals for offside….
He should have stayed on the pitch during the Crystal Palace game and Mustafi should have been substituted. I don’t think the outcome would have been worse than what we experienced.
Hindsight is a great thing.
Dino had been carded & looked vulnerable against Palace’s forwards. It was the right call, you can’t account for the brain freeze that Mustafi performed on Zaha.
Can’t help but feel that he’s the one that should have gone on loan, and Chambers should have been the one to stay here. That strange decision in the summer is still costing us now.
He was injured for the first several months of the season, nobody would have taken him on loan.
Fair enough, we still should have kept hold of Chambers though, maybe let Mavropanos go if he was fit enough in January.
And who would we be playing now? Because we wouldn’t have been able to recall Chambers.
Its funny, I didn’t hear anyone clamouring for Chambers most of the season, up until sunday. That old hindsight power, eh?
I don’t understand, I’m saying we never should have loaned Chambers out in the first place. And to be fair, a lot of people on here were saying the same thing at beginning of the season. It’s even more baffling considering that he can also play RB and DM, could have been very useful to have him around.
At the time Chambers left there was talk of us getting in an experienced CB but that all fell through. I hope he comes back next season. I wasn’t pleased to see him on a list of players that we might sell.
Was Mustafi playing as right back in youth setting? How did he manage to go through ? Have you seen how one fan proved with stats that Mustafi is having better season than Van Dijk ?
That is exactly the problem with stats. It doesn’t tell you the whole story. I see why Wenger was resistant to it. Saying Mustafi is having a better season than Van Dyke proves that point
Maybe if he wasn’t resistant to it, we wouldn’t have overlooked VVD to go and spend almost £40M on Mustafi.
You are trolling, aren’t you?
I checked tackle success : Mustafi 74% and Van Dijk 72%. Mustafi put on 173 tackles and Van Dijk 157. This is on Premier League.com. Mustafi better at interceptions as well. Stats on catastrophic errors not published though.
You can’t ever base on stats alone. I’ve been saying this to the stats obssessed “By The Numbers” but he publishes only what he wants people to see for his own agenda. BUT Stats does give you some indication that the player is no where as poor as some prefer to imagine him to be. As I mentioned, the previous match against Watford many lauded praise rightly on Koscielny. BUT it was Mustafi that came in with the most intercepts, the most duels won, the most Aerial duels won and the most tackles. Just on aerial intercepts alone, we’ve seen… Read more »
You are missing the point. Defensive stats are often inversely proportional. I.e. Mustafi makes more takles because he is out of position and has to recover. Van Dijk, I’d say from watching most of their games this season, is rarely caught out the same way.
Also people are crying against stats, but are only publishing biased stats. How about errors directly leading to chances? I’m sure the stats between VVD and Mustafi will be different then.
Errors leading to goals Mustafi 0, Xhaka 2 loooool
https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/players/error_lead_to_goal
Santori compiling the stats after writing his books.
Obviously not close to the finished article, but I’d rather he plays moving forward than that fraud Mustafi
Why is he a fraud?
He ‘s been playing well for quite a while with few mistakes.
All other players also make mistakes leading to goals. Monreal has been caught out of position many times.
Is Mustafi your big brother?
You’re as bad as the Ozil lovers who thought he played well against palace.
Translation: I am finished with Mustafi
I thought he was better than Mustafi in the last match. Pity he already had a yellow card for an “unexperienced foul”. If not I prefer him to stay for the second half than Mustafi.
Mustafi was better than Mavropanos first half.
Mustafi had a strong first half.
He cleared the ball under pressure against Kelly bearing in on goal but many choose to ignore these contributions since it is Mustafi.
Mavropanos, Holding and Chambers, the future of Arsenal Defense and probably another solid CB to add to in case Chambers does not fit the bill.
Or…I don’t think we have a choice. Sokratis still in his own sin bin. Koscielny will have durability issues. If he can be fit for Wolves a massive bonus. Mustafi needs to get his head fixed. Monreal is the other option. So Mavropanos may have to come into contention. He will make the odd mistake as well which may or may not go punished. Its going to be a mixed bag with him too bc he is just learning. All depends on Koscielny. If he isn’t fit then Mustafi-Monreal-Mavropanos against Wolves. Which to say the least won’t fill anyone with… Read more »
Tomorrow is huge! So glad Sokratis is back… don’t want Mustafi or Elneny anywhere near the team! I hope UE gets his team selection right as I can’t stomach another game like the one I witnessed on Sunday…. Xhaka trained too, so would give anything to see him & Torreira instead of Elneny & Guendouzi ? If we play crap & don’t even try, the mother of all meltdowns will happen….
This clearly means that Kos will be rested and we might see Sokratis and Mavropanos as our defensive partnership (if we go for a back 4) or Sokratis, Mavropanos and Monreal (if we go for a back 3) on Wed
Sokratis returned from ban? That’s great news.
So should be Sokratis -Monreal (and either of Mustafi or Mavro) if Koscielny is 50-50
I’m not sure we can hold in back 4 other than Sokratis-Koscielny the two most experienced heads.
Mustafi was OK in back 3 but back 4 and he’s all over the place.
Its a big match so hopefully BOTH Koscielny and Mustafi are good to go.