We always think of a loan spell as a chance for a young player to prove they deserve chances at their parent club, but it can also show them that they might be better off moving on and establishing themselves somewhere else.
Dinos Mavropanos has always been on the fringe of the Arsenal first team so it wasn’t a great loss when he went on loan to Stuttgart this season, but he’s starting to live up to that early potential.
His performances have earned him a debut with Greece and a report from Bild has indicated that the Bundesliga side want to find a way to keep him.
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That may not be simple as Arsenal do have problems in defence so reinforcements are needed, but you would expect that William Saliba would be first in line for opportunities with the returning loanees.
The report carries some quotes from the defender, and it does sound like he’s open to staying unless Arsenal convince him that he’s going to get a genuine chance next season:
“I can’t say that at the moment. Things can change quickly in football. I still have two months here in Stuttgart and would like to end the season with the team as high up as possible. “
“The door at VfB is open for me – that’s very good. But I can only really think about the future once we have talks with Arsenal for the new season.”
It’s an interesting one for the Gunners if they don’t see him having a long-term future because his performances will have increased his stock and it could also be a good time to sell him on, so that may come into their thinking too.
He’s clearly done enough to show he deserves a chance, but perhaps he might be best served staying in Germany where he’s going to be a regular starter.
Arsenal do not have a problem with their defense
Virtually every story about the Gunners makes a familiar claim:
“…as Arsenal do have problems in defense so reinforcements are needed…”
The statement is made so frequently, people accept it as fact when to put it bluntly, it is so obviously untrue the pundits and authors are either delusional or just plain lying. All you need to do to see the truth is look at the Premier League table. Compared to the teams in the top half of the table, Arsenal have comparable goals against with all of them except Manchester City.
Arsenal have surrendered 35 goals so far during this campaign, while the Citizens have surrendered only 23. Manchester United have given up 33. Leicester have conceded 34 times, Chelsea have allowed 31 goals in, Liverpool, 37 goals, West Ham United, 37 goals, Tottenham, 32 goals, Everton, 38 goals, Leeds 49 goals, and Aston Villa, 33 goals.
Arsenal are solidly in the same defensive league as the other top four sides. What is markedly different form Arsenal and the teams above them in the table are goals for.
The goals for column in the table, however, reveals the truth. Arsenal have scored only 40 goals across 30 games, while Manchester City has scored 67 across 32 games. Manchester United? 58 goals. Leicester? 53 goals. Chelsea? 50 goals. Liverpool have score 53 goals, West Ham have scored 48 goals, Tottenham, 51, Everton 41, Leeds, 49, and Aston Villa, 43.
The problem with Arsenal is not, as the pundits would suggest, their center backs or full backs or defensive midfielders, or even their forwards, who are not scoring as much as usual. There are, in fact, two issues contributing to Arsenal’s stalled attempt to make the top four.
The first problem with Arsenal is the approach to the game. The Gunners have taken a major step back from the attacking football the club was so famous for during their 20-year run in the Champions League. That would be fine if it were working. It is not. The less the team attacks, the fewer goals it scores.
Arsene Wenger was routinely criticized for possession without purpose during the last ten years of his reign, but Arsenal’s build-from-the-back approach under Mikel Arteta is hardly producing the kind of free-flowing aesthetic displays Manchester City has become known for under Pep Guardiola. And the approach has led to proven scorers like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette having their joint worst years in Arsenal red.
The second cause of Arsenal’s failed attempt to reach their former heights it is their central midfielders. They just do not score. Emile Smith-Rowe has 0 goals and 3 assists and Martin Odegaard has 1 goal and 0 assists. Mesut Ozil and Aaron Ramsey were both reliable, if not always prolific goal scorers form attacking midfield and central midfield positions.
In Mesut Ozil’s tenure at the club (before the Gunner’s leadership made him the scapegoat for their own failures) he had the following numbers from attacking midfield: 5 goals, 10 assists; 4 goals, 6 assists; 6 goals, 19 assists; 8 goals, 10 assists; 4 goals, 9 assists; 5 goals, 2 assists (Emery’s first year in charge – the benching begins). In Ozil’s worst year, he was head and shoulders better than any player Arsenal started in central attacking midfield since he was benched.
Aaron Ramsey, across the same period, racked up these statistics: 10 goals, 9 assists; 6 goals, 6 assists; 5 goals, 4 assists; 1 goal, 4 assists (11 starts, missed 13 games to injury) 7 goals, 10 assists; and 4 goals, 6 assists. This is the player that Unai Emery and the Arsenal front office let go for free. The team’s chosen successors’ production relative to Ramsey’s has been, to put it nicely, wretched. By comparison, Denis Suarez, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Mateo Guendouzi, Joe Willock, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Willian, Smith-Rowe, Odegaard, among others, have stumbled around like drunks in a locked closet trying to produce Ramsey-like numbers while the club slipped and slid ever further down the table.
Arsenal have recorded their most losses in a Premier League season, are anemic on offense but they are, in truth average to above average relative to all but one of the top six teams in the Premier League. There is plenty to criticize if you write about the team as it languishes in 11th place 31 matches into the season, that there is really no need for fabrication.
This is an honest opinion. Arsenal’s problems don’t need power to fix them but a mere look at what we do everyday means Arteta needs to only look at why his players are stumbling drunks with new tactics all the time just talking and barking in the
touchline too much.
The problem as to why we don’t score is simply fearing to lose and playing at a handbrake resulting to this goal ratio in 31games. Arteta is too good in talking like he made football but should translate this eloquent talking to the pitch. Today is the player’s fault and tomorrow it’s him period.