I disagree with @SRCJJ on his assessment of Sokratis. I think he is a very solid no nonsense defender who makes very few mistakes and be brave to put himself in danger before he sees the opposition score. I’m quite happy to see him pick up yellows stopping attacks. With Holding he had a very solid partnership. With Mustafi he had someone fucking up all his good work.
Now my perspective isn’t perfect because I watch less Arsenal these days because of my ambivalance to this team.
I think Sokratis has his fuck up moments, a fair amount of them, but I wouldn’t go as far to criticise him as others do.
I agree with @InvincibleDB10, he’s competent, but for the club we want to be, he should be third choice/rotation/back up whatever the fuck you wanna call it. Back in the day that’s what he would have been and we’d have loved him appropriately.
I like Sokratis. Mainly because his facial expressions are like mine when I watch us play.
I like him because he’s Greek and I can picture him doing this.
His yellows aren’t just to stop attacks though, they’re routinely unnecessary and the result of over commititng himself.
He had a decent season and sure he’s a throwback defender but he’s not much more than average and Kos even past is best is our best defender.
Sokratis is tough and does fist pumps with passion when he makes tackles so a fair portion of fans overrate him. He’s not bad, but any club that is content with him as a no 1 CB is also content with finishing 6th.
For complete overblown go in the Mav thread till he played that is. Fucking mental worship that was.
He’s not bad… that’s just it… all the rest of our CB are… bad… other than Holding (injured) and Koss (aging and now wanting out)… we just don’t have any options and Sokratis is the least of our problems lol.
Nah I’d say the two strikers and keeper are the least of our problems.
Yes agreed, my point was about CB problems.
The goalkeeper is alright, but nothing special. Cech was crucified season before last for having six errors leading to goals. Leno had five this season. He has his strengths, but also his weaknesses. I do think he’s capable of developing into a very good keeper, but he needs to command the box better and work on taking hold of those crosses.
This is correct it took Sven one window to bring in a better defender than anyone we currently employ at our club. With a proper partner in Holding they were doing an admirable job in defense. The caveat being that we could have a top class defender back there, but we’d still leaks goals because our midfield is a sieve.
I do agree he needs to work on those attributes that you mention, I was a big critic of his at the start of the season but he’s winning me over.
Man City won the league with 100 points with Otamendi as their first choice central defender. Otamendi is a Sokratis level CB.
This is exactly it. Our midfield has about as much energy in it as a languid sloth.
So the problem is he has a retarded agent.
He’s not getting out because he’s on low wages and the alternative is 10 more games with Mustafi starting.
Not really, he signed that contract in January 2017… with Wenger. We basically paid him most of his contract up front so he got his money, but Wenger, in classic Wenger style, promised to let him go in the last year if he wouldn’t play him, because that would mean he wouldn’t be making money anymore.
Problem for poor old Laurent is his big socialist daddy is gone now, so he will have to suck it up and take the hard capitalist world up his bum.
Very interesting if true, it would change everything for me
Salary was my biggest concern
I don’t remember even Wenger letting players go for free who were under contract.
I also don’t entirely buy Le Grove as being an ITK. I still kind of think it boils down to Kosceilny securing a 2-3 year deal in France and he doesn’t think he’ll get that in 12 months time.