The one weakness Arsenal has had over the last few seasons is our defence, with our propensity to let in ridiculous goals for no reason at all by silly mistakes by our unconfident defenders. Unai Emery addressed this in the summer (or our management team did) by bringing in Sokratis and Lichtsteiner and of course promoting Rob Holding and Dino Mavropanos to the first team.
Admittedly it hasn’t worked out brilliantly yet, with Arsenal already having conceded 15 goals compared to Man City and Liverpool’s 5 (and Chelsea’s 8) but we do seem to be going in the right direction now, although we’ve still only had two clean sheets in the League this season.
But it looks like our captain Laurent Koscielny is now approaching fitness and will be ready to compete for a first team place. Emery said today: “He started to train with us, every day, one month ago,” our head coach said. “The process with him in this international break is to finish training with us every day to start playing, little by little.
“First, our idea is to start with the under-23s, but also, these two weeks training with us, I am looking at him. He is well, with good performances, good feeling and I think he, today, is close to also playing with us.
“But the first idea is, and maybe on Monday, he can play with the under-23s. We are going to decide tomorrow the plan with him, but we are thinking for him to start to take minutes.”
I can see him starting off with games in the Caraboa Cup and the Europa League, but with the loads of options that we now have in defence, what is the honest chances of Kos the Boss coming back and playing regularly in the first team?
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I don’t think he is as fit as Sokratis and Mustafi, even when he was not injured. Before his injury, I saw his performance has decreased substantially
Emery might use him as a leader though, because Ramsey and him are the longest serving main players. I hope Mavropanos or Holding can be his successor
I actually think he is ideal as whoever is going to replace him in the long run as Kos will not be able to play every game, Kos plays as the left CB and Holding in my opinion plays better on the left side of CB… oh and Mavrop played that side when he got mins and he looked good.
Holding and Mavrop can be fighting it out to be main understudy, they will get mins and it is a pair of CBs that can and should be looking to be the two main CBs for that role. Mavrop is coming back from injury (or is he back now?), we shouldn’t rush him and being the 3rd choice (when the 1st choice is half broken) will mean he can push forward without any pressure in his development.
I’m not overly worried about our defense in the long run, as we can see from my perspective, the left CB pos is well covered and I rate each and every one of those players.
The right CB role is less convincing in my opinion, I hope Chambers can come back and push hard, give Emery headaches over that role like he could be having on the right CB role. Mustafi has infuriated me but I am wiping the slate clean, well… as clean as I can XD Emery deserves the time to iron out those errors with his coaching. If not then he does have some resale value and Sokratis/Chambers could do for a while.
To highlight how important I feel the coaching is, I think Jenks deserves another chance, he is a hard worker and now Emery can get him focused on learning the tactics and technique to defend. He has a good root foot for a cross and he has pace to burn, he is one of the few players who I feel would work hard and be happy with being a backup… Still give 110% as he loves the club. As long as he can perform well enough then why not give him another chance?
Back to Kos the Boss, I feel we should be looking to move past him, depending on how well he comes back from this injury to how long that is.
He’s getting on a bit now & seems to be more injury prone
Mavropanos’ come back date has been put back.. so if anything happens to Mustafi or Holding then he’s bound to get the nod… but other than that I can’t see him playing very often
Monreal is going to miss Sunday, spuds & mancs…. is Sokratis back for Sunday??
Being a fan who always puts realism based on what we already know – that Kos will not be offered another contract and has had a long standing chronic injury and his form had already dropped off alarmingly anyway- I say that Kos will never again play more than a bit part in our shirt. His useful days have come and are gone. Realism! Hope is mere hope but realism is reality.
Hope is not mere hope.
Hope drives our species forward.
Cazorla injury.
Realism was he would never kick a ball again, he would be lucky to just walk!
Hope was he would play again.
Please do not write off any Arsenal player for ego sake, if you are a supporter then you can try supporting… Novel I know. I am not saying be delusional. It wasn’t delusional to hope Cazorla could play football again, we knew it would be slim but we kept that belief.
I wonder if that support helped Cazorla, I know he said Wenger helped him a lot by supporting him in rehab and working towards the hope of playing football again.
Meant to say, I say this because I do believe hope is a wonderful thing that can help each and every one of us have a more fulfilling life.
Have hopes. Work for them. Their your hopes, if any hope is worth the effort then it is our own hopes.
If Kos hopes to play and be a big part player for a last season or two then he has to work towards that goal. If Little Jimmy wants to be the next best footballer then he has to work at it.
Sorry, it frustrates me seeing people dismiss hope as if it is nothing. It is one of the most powerful forces known to man. It can make the world better for all of us. We can chose to live in hope and work towards our goals or live in ‘realism’ and fall into a trap of pessimist thinking. “Oh this or that will never happen, I’m being a realist”.
You have a pointb that hope is important and I did not say differently, though you appear to believe that I did. My point is that sober reality is more important than mere hope, even though hope of course also plays a role, when making key life decisions. To abandon sober thoughtful analysis free of all distractions is to fool oneself, to a degree at least. You do not appear to appreciate my regular doses of realism on here. I do so, in part to counter the plethora of silly hype posts many of them by YOUNG , INEXPERIENCED PEOPLE WHO LIVE OUTSIDE BRITAIN AND THUS RARELY WATCH ARSENAL IN THE FLESH , which I have noticed SO OFTEN ON HERE. My point is that silly unfounded hope or hype, alone, and without accompanying sober reasoning, does our beloved club harm rather than good, BECAUSE it falsely raises expectations. Young people rarely have the life perspective and experience of older people. THIS IS TRUE OF FOOTBALL FANS AS ALSO OF MUCH ELSE IN LIFE. JUST A THOUGHT FOR YOU TO PONDER, IF YOU WISH. Lastly on a technical accuracy, HOPE is MERE HOPE if unaccompanied by anything else. Everything in life is too, if you think about it, if on its own. Hope is not bad, it is good,if sensibly and realistically used . But only in that circumstance.
I believe Kos has already said that he would leave at the end of the season, maybe I got that one wrong?
If fit and healthy, Kos is by far and away our best central defender, especially having to cope with Mustafi by his side more often than not.
Would like to see him next to Sokrates, some real experience there for sure.
I really hope he has another couple of seasons with us, he has always given his best for the team and supporters.
Exactly bro @ ken, Its obvious koscienly might not be here next year Buh truth remains that a fit koscienly is still better than every defender we have @ d moment, koscienly has bn an obidient servant to us and one of very few world class players in recent times,I will prefer koscienly ahead of any players @ that back all day!
Kos and Mustafi did alright when we had a CM partnership which included a DM, Coquelin/Cazorla combo.
Mustafi has errors in him but with a real DM then those errors are less and less in my opinion, Mustafi doesn’t step out as much and we can keep the shape better.
Torriera influence for the win 😉
“Was” Ken , not “is”. Bergkamp was once our best player too but he no longer is. Time changes everything, physically for the worse too, as we oldies surely know from our own life experience on this Earth. It is foolish to deny this clear truth.
I believe Koscielny can again challenge for a consistent first team position this season before he fades. He’s arguably been our best player for the last few seasons and his given a lot for the club. Would be a shame to see him limp out.
Koscielny is better than all the CBs we have when fully fit, he is among d best CBs in EPL on his day… the issue is that he didnt fully recover from his injury last season thatz why he struggled n had a rubbish partner in Mustafi who made things more difficult.
We have 3 good LCBs … Koscielny,Sokratis,Holding
We need to sell better RCBs… sell Mustafi n get Benatia n Bailly.
….
Prior to January we should set up with Koscielny-Sokratis when both are fit.
Holding the backup
Some continue to fool themselves on here regarding Koscielnys “future” with us. Why do you do this? It is clear he will not be here next season and all the comments about his being good when fit, are well out of date now. That is obvious to all realists. Pity so many fans hate realism.
Like it was clear Cazorla would never kick a ball again in his career, how he would be lucky to walk…
Ever heard of probability?
Yes I have heard of probability. Are you happy now!
Comments about being good when fit out of date? Is he not good when fit then?
How is it clear he will not be here next season?
I think you just like to be controversial for the sake of it.