Arsenal: Shkodran Mustafi's Height Completely Irrelevant
Arsenal has a small back line yet again with Shkodran Mustafi, but when you really look at the ways that may effect them, there aren’t many.
It wouldn’t be an Arsenal signing if people weren’t already looking for all of their faults. With Lucas Perez thoroughly and unfairly dissected by pundits and supporters alike, we now turn to Shkodran Mustafi and the criticism heaped on him.
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It wasn’t as bad as the criticism of Lucas, but their was one particular point that irked me. The Telegraph decided to highlight Mustafi’s height as a potential problem, but I don’t see how they can make sense of this in the least bit.
Arsenal has certainly lacked height for some time, minus Per Mertesacker and Olivier Giroud, but height isn’t the only factor that goes into winning aerial duels. Holding was also singled out for being of smaller height, yet Holding is averaging five aerial duels won per match, tied for the top spot among Premier League defenders.
Meanwhile, Mustafi won three in his first ever EPL match.
Strength, timing, jumping ability and more all factor into a player’s ability to properly handle aerial confrontations and, based on the small sample that we have and based on history, Mustafi knows how to win aerial duels. As does Laurent Koscielny.
Aside from that, the Premier League has been gradually moving away from the strategy of having speedy wingers get down the touchlines and send balls into tall strikers. Very few teams use that anymore, not even Arsenal and they have the best aerial striker in England. So even if Mustafi, Koscielny and Holding were all sub-par at aerial duels, which they aren’t, there is no need to target a defender solely based on height.
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It’s like it’s gotten to the point where critics are just looking for reasons to disagree.
Nicolas Otamendi, who leads the Premier League in aerial duels won at the moment (he’s tied with Rob Holding actually) is the exact same height as Mustafi.
So what are we complaining about? Per Mertesacker may be tall but I have seen him get bullied in the air plenty of times because he is not always that strong and he doesn’t jump all that well. It’s just irresponsible to say that Arsenal should be wary of Mustafi because he isn’t that tall. That has so little to do with it.
Plus, if it does come down to a matter of set pieces, Arsenal has Olivier Giroud to handle the top man on the other side and Koscielny and Mustafi can use their strength and athleticism to cover whoever else there may be.
Bring on the next critique. I’m bored with this one.
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