Shkodran Mustafi has officially been announced by Arsenal, but could Wenger still overthink the big German’s arrival?
Arsenal officially announced Lucas Perez on Tuesday as expected and that was soon followed by the official arrival of Shkodran Mustafi at long last. The deal was already known to be completed, as Mustafi and Wenger openly spoke of it, but it’s always nice to see him holding the shirt.
There are now two weeks to get Lucas and Mustafi conditioned for the return of club action, which will be a necessity with the added workload coming up. And yet, I can’t shake this feeling that Wenger could overthink the German’s arrival and put of his inevitable rise to the first team.
I think back to Mohamed Elneny joining in January. Arsenal needed a midfielder of his ilk like nobody’s business. Even if he wasn’t the holding midfielder we needed, it sure as hell beat Mathieu Flamini.
Yet Wenger kept putting it off under the pretense that Elneny ‘had to learn how tough life in England was going to be’. It was a quote that became a running joke in my articles and I still use it to this day, mostly ineffectively.
I keep wondering when this mindset is going to strike again. Even with Mustafi being an ‘Everton reject’ and therefore having some knowledge of ‘how tough life in England is’ I can’t help but think that Mustafi is going to have to earn his way into the starting XI and beat out Rob Holding.
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It’s not the worst idea ever, but it doesn’t need to happen. Mustafi is clearly being bought for the here and now. He is an absolute class defender that will be an upgrade on Holding’s current ability. Don’t get me wrong, Holding has been great, but I’ll take the upgrade whenever we can get it.
Wenger may not be of that mind. To him, Holding has earned it. He’s proven himself a Premier League quality defender and as such, he may have first dibs on the role unless displaced by Mustafi.
Then again, I don’t see Mustafi agreeing to a deal that sees him as a back up from the start. But who knows. This is Arsene Wenger we are talking about.
At the very least, we know we will see him that first week back from international break because Arsenal begins a streak of having two games a week. That’s why Mustafi is here. I just hope that we will see him next to Koscielny.
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