Reports this morning link Arsenal with a move for Greek central defender Konstantinos Mavropanos.
The 20 year old is, apparently, expected to command a fee of around £2m, but won’t immediately join the club. Instead, he’ll spend the second half of the season on loan with Werder Bremen.
Understand #afc interest in 20-year-old centre-back Konstantinos Mavropanos originally reported in Greece is genuine. Negotiations ongoing but fee likely to be in region of £2.2m. Not an immediate first-team addition. Loan to Werder Bremen more likely. https://t.co/QYplPs5SCp
— James Olley (@JamesOlley) January 3, 2018
The 20 year old currently plays for PAS Giannina who sit 10th in the Greek Superleague at this moment in time.
6’2 Mavropanos has made 14 league appearances so far, scoring three goals and picking up six yellow cards in those games.
Yesterday, Arsene Wenger spoke about his January transfer plans, and with the age profile of our central defenders making youthful recruitment a priority, this kind of deal would not be a surprise at all.
We’re going a solid enough 3 on the Poo-o-Meter.
Everyone is going to say it, but that doesn’t make it any less true: this one has Sven written all over it.
It does have the ring of Papastathopoulos to it. Funnily enough, he comes from Kalamata, so I guess he’s the best thing to come out of there since the nice olives.
2.2M? Nah, let’s offer 1M and then 1.25M, wait until 31st January and offer 5M.
If a player is being bought for the future, and isn’t even going straight in the first team squad, why wouldn’t they try a bit of bargaining if there’s no competition for his signature????
Oh Man. You really seem to believe and agree with majority of the things which took this club from premier league challengers and top 10 in Europe to 5-6th spot in England and Thursday evenings heroics.
I’m guessing you’re the kinda guy to haggle at a pound shop whilst driving a Bentley.
Before PSG/City come in with a deadline £45m deal, making him the most expensive Greek player of all time.
I was going to rant about transfer policy but then i read ur comment and sven in it and i felt good about him instantly…
I’d be surprised if Sven Mislintat has anything to do with this guy. I know there’s speculation that we’ve been looking at a centre back from Mainz at Mislintat’s recommendation. But I don’t know if he was really brought in because of his knowledge of the Greek Super League – I’d be surprised. Regardless, i’ve said it so many times. It doesn’t matter who we get in anymore. Every new signing will end up getting coached by the same coaches, which have been coaching all the same old mistakes into the Arsenal players for the last decade. Until the coaches… Read more »
Best of luck to him. He’ll need it if he’s to play ahead of Holding, Chambers & Bielik.
Blogs said that we might need to recruit with the age profile or our defenders but we already had the three you listed.
And none of them are good enough if we’re brutally honest
I like Holding. I still think he has a lot to offer. As for Chambers, he is still really young, and this period in his career is so crucial. I just think we need to loan him out to a club in the Premier League where he is going to be taught how to defend properly.
Like shift him on up to Burnley for a season. Because he isn’t going to learn how to defend properly round our gaff.
With Wenger in charge, he has a good chance of being used as a replacement for Sanchez.
The next 2-3 tranasfer period will tell a lot about the real intentions of our management/owner…
I think the main reason why Özil and Alexis joined us was that they believed: from now on Arsenal want to fight with the best teams. If they leave and we try to build a team mainly from young talent… again – We will cement our reputation as the BVB of the Premier League for the following years / Top4 Team etc.
http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11670/11193248/arsenals-lack-of-progress-summer-words-have-counted-for-nothing
I like many of things they said but how dare they think Laca hasn’t been a success with all the running behind defences, the interplay to get others score ect….
He’s a striker, he’s here to score goals. So far, he isn’t successful.
However that’s not his fault. I really don’t understand why the coaching team don’t inform and coach the team to get the best out of him, instead they just use him like he’s Giroud.
What the hell do they do at those morning sessions at the training ground?
TBH, I wouldn’t mind another project youth. At least there’s a vision behind that project. We had The Doubles, The Invincibles, Project Youth, each one having it’s own specific style. What the hell is the current project? What is our style? What’s clear is we can’t compete with the Citys and Units of spending. I wouldn’t mind a reboot, especially as this fear of “we’ll become a Europa team” is already being realised as we speak. F*ck it, I’d rather see AMN as a DM, Nelson rather than Theo, Nketiah rather than Welbeck up front, Macey rather than Ospina, etc.… Read more »
Hmm. Buy 50 players costing 2 million each and loan them all while other clubs buy 1 player for 100 million. Good thinking Sven. Catalyst for change. The situation is ideal.
So many players on loan with no result. Asano, the Nigerian boy, Akpom etc… None burst into first team. Akpom will retire from football still on loan.
Not sure Akpom is the club’s fault – he’s just been banned from driving for 4 years which doesn’t strike me as what a dedicated professional would be doing
Akpom isn’t even on loan. At least get your facts right.
And you’re mad to expect Kelechi to break into the first team after just 1 season of purchase and loan.
What? 😀
We don’t need him, we’ve got Ben Sheaf who will be like a new signing. We are also waiting for Asano next season, who can play centre-half and will be like a new signing.
Here we go again…same old shit
lets just hope that its paper talk
Where is Kristian Bielik?
Under Wenger’s instructions to be turned into another average CB, rather than being the dominant DM he initially came to the club as.
he came as a young prospect. Thats it lol
I was hoping we would give a run of games to Chambers and Holding. Wenger doesn’t seem confident of that either. I started this season hoping for a top 4 finish with a few cup runs and maybe a good go at the Europa League. I will be happy to sacrifice all of that if we could see a team that can play half decent football. I have never not wanted to watch Arsenal play.
I really would like to see upgrades on Elneny, Coquelin, Theo, Welbz. Too many alright players playing below average football.
Yey! Know nothing about him but as a Greek gooner, that’s a bit of exciting news. Mind you, last time we had a Greek player he didn’t really set the world alight (Tavlaridis) so let’s hope Mavropanos is the real deal!
Really? 6 yellows in 14 appearances…Just someone else for the Refs to target.
Patrick Vieira ? Lol.
In greek sites had written the last summer that for the player were intersteded Borusia Dortmund
Ah fair play. I guess we have decided on going for Lemar & Douglas Costa after this deal is wrapped up.
It’s only the 3rd of January and already have the feeling this window will be total shite from a Gunners perspective.
Like anyother fan went to check out on youtube. Couldnt find video on him. Hope it was Kostas Manolas news which got lost in transalation.
Funny, I remember when Manolas was first announced on this site as an early rumour a few years back. Everyone was like “who?” and they wanted someone more established.
Now everyone would be happy to sign him. Go figure.
Our transfer record is simply to do with not getting quality player through the door. We have identified them but for one reason or another (I’m sure a whole story will come out about it one day) the deals never got done. The deals were all over the internet and newspapers but someone got them before us. And the record of us beating others to their signature has also been extremely shockingly poor. Basically we used to be able to get quality players to sign a contract and now we don’t. (hint, scouts and wenger were still around back in… Read more »
Going on recent young signings who go out on loan it’s likely this lad will never play for us, loan after loan after loan and perm deal to somewhere else
To be fair we played better football when we had a squad of kids.
Sounds a lot like the Manolas story – tried to get him early, he went to Roma and now he’s in demand.
I like the idea of getting young players in, but I worry that they don’t get the playing time they need to develop. Think of all the youngsters that didn’t get time, went to a smaller club, and then returned to the big time: Matic, KDB, Salah, etc
Really good point. Getting in young players and hoping/watching them develop is really cool. The rate of the news cycle these days makes that model seem out dated and unsupportable, sadly. Its like many of the commentors here forgot that Arsenal is a football club. There is an academy. This isn’t Man City where Pep THE MAGNIFICENT (or that other douchebag at the Fulham bus stop – I was thinking of Merdinho, but he’s in manchester. conti seems an okay sort tbh.) buys who he wants for what money it takes without regard to price tag. Wenger said a few… Read more »
Pity Wenger’s buy, develop and sell didn’t take place now. We could have paid off our stadium debt in a season or two. Henry, Fabregas, Cashley and others would have brought in 200 million plus.
Don’t understand why people are mad about this. Were people expecting our new scouting guru to tell Wenger to use his resources and contacts, trawl the world for talent then tell Wenger to sign Sergio Ramos?
Hopefully the new scouting/recruitment team will put an end to our disastrous strategy of the last five years of trying to build around a group of average English players.
‘average English’ is a redundancy. There is only one exceptional English player and unfortunately he plays for Spurs as a striker.
Jack isn’t a striker, and he plays for us.
Dunno who you’re referencing. Sounds like a window licker.
10 years ago it was ‘buy ALL the attacking midfielders!’.
Now it’s ‘buy ALL the centre halves!’
Overwhelmed
I don’t understand why anyone is upset by this report. If it is true, it means we have identified a promising player who might, in a few years, be a useful addition. Or he might never be good enough, and we will have to sell him. In neither case does this affect plans for the current squad nor is the money enough to make any difference in transfer activity. So, what is the problem?
Typical Wenger move, when we are in dire straits and need to add to the squad in all areas he goes for a $2 million prospect who could turn out to be great or a bust, but either way won’t contribute this season. Nothing wrong with that approach if it’s followed by more aggressive transfer business now and in the Summer to help the squad immediately.
As a Mavroudis, I applaud adding a Mavropanos to the MavroArsenal.