Sokratis Papastathopoulos

Not at all. Kolasinac is left footed and better with the ball than Sokratis. I think Sokratis is probably the first he wants to sell because everybody else are better passers.

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Fair points tbh

Just underlines what an awful awful transfer this was.

Sokratis is a competent enough defender, but is getting old and is horrible on the ball.

Not suited to what many managers would require.

£17m pissed down the wall, when that money should have been used to buy an actual important starting level defender like Soyuncu, even if it was for a little more.

He’s probably going to leave this summer, so what a great era for us during his time here :giroud2: :facepalm:

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He wasn’t good enough at Dortmund towards the end so it was always a ridiculous transfer to make. We totally pissed away nearly £20m (well probably £25m or so when you factor in wages) on this shitter

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Exactly, I mean wtf was he meant to provide that wasn’t already on the team?

Nothing. Ideally, once Saliba arrives and hopefully does well, we are only lacking one starting calibre CB. That should have been the one brought in instead of Sokratis.

Hiring smalldickers really does pay, because then executives throw money that is usually ultimately wasted at problems that are only problems because the coach isn’t right.

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Weren’t we lacking a senior CB with Kos out until December, when Papa signed?

No Sven was just signing all his mates from Dortmund

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I think so, but even still that should have been an opportunity to get a new Kos from 2011, not a replacement for Kos of 2018.

More short term stupidity overseen by that bald bastard.

Sokratis malaka alert!!!

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Who was he replying to? :grin:

Probably our best defender. Arteta needs to suck it in and bench at least two of Musti-Luiz-Kola.

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He’s basically done what Pep done to Hart in 2016 haha

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Is this guy injured or doesn’t Arteta fancy him?

When you see a sentence like that, it makes you realise how bad our defence is.
We’ve gone from Adams, Bould, Gilberto, Keown, Campbell as our CB options, who played in a well organised defence, to having Sokratis as our best CB playing alongside Mustafi, Luiz, Kola in a shambles.

I think Arteta must fancy defenders that are capable of passing.

Not really. Sokratis isn’t that bad and 17m is piss all in today’s market. It’s like forking out a couple mil for a 3rd stringer 10 years ago. Sure, we could do better, but that’s the case with like every single transfer isn’t it?

I’ve always maintained he’s a decent defender. Yeah he can’t pass well, but it wasn’t so long ago when that was loads of defenders too.

Easy to say should have signed Soyuncu now you’ve seen him playing regularly in the PL.

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Not really. He was a highly rated talent available for a similar fee. The smart move was to spend that money on a player with a higher upside not a player who’d been battling injury problems and had seen better days anyway.

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It isn’t when it’s a washed out 30 year old who was never that great to begin with.

We got laughed at all the way to the bank by BVB there :joy:

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I don’t want to debate semantics about Soyuncu specifically, and I don’t disagree he was a talent and I recall us being linked, but at the same time, there are many other things that would have been relevant then that aren’t now. Which is why it’s easy for people to talk about in hindsight.

Maybe if the post had have been less specific and said we should have gone for a younger option generally, that’d be cool.

I just think it’s bullshit for fans to use hindsight and apply it to a past situation, particularly when they have basically zero knowledge of the internal decision-making process that contributed to it in the first place, among other things.

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I do remember saying so at the time too, let me find the evidence.