HARDCASE FOR THE DEFENCE
Papa reckons his old-school, take-no-prisoners approach can solve Gunners’ back pain
CENTRE-BACK Sokratis Papastathopoulos has promised to bring back some old-school, hard-as-nails defending to Arsenal.
And that will be music to the ears of Gunners fans who have grown frustrated at their side’s flakiness at the back in recent years.
Last season, they shipped 51 goals – 24 more than Premier League champions Manchester City, 12 more than seventhplaced Burnley and four more than Newcastle, who finished 10th. In all competitions they conceded a whopping 76.
Sokratis knows that has to change if his new side are to stand any chance of a top-four finish this season.
And the former Borussia Dortmund star, who cost £17.6million, hopes the Spartan spirit he’ll bring will help them shore things up.
The 30-year-old, who is also known as Papa to his teammates, said: “I am here to show I am first a defender and after that comes everything else. Of course you have to know how to play with the ball, in the last five or six years football has changed a lot.
“A lot of coaches and teams now look at only how to play, not how to defend.
“But with the new coach, we work also on the situations when we don’t have the ball and this is very important.
“On the first day, the coach worked on this.
“With Unai Emery, all the players work on tactics, we look a lot at videos, what was wrong, what we have to do better. I think and hope that this year things at the back will be much better.”
Sokratis cut his teeth at AEK Athens before moving to Genoa then AC Milan. Paolo Maldini (right) was the defender he most looked up to in his early days in Italy, although he’d left the San Siro by the time Sokratis arrived. Still, Alessandro Nesta (above) and Thiago Silva were there to teach him well. Sokratis added: “My first step was in Italy and Maldini was a great player.
“I played with Nesta, that was one big school for me.
“Also with Thiago Silva, great players to learn from — they were defenders who were defenders first.
“I learned a lot and now I am ready to give what I know.”
Arsenal were reluctant to sign or hand new long-term deals to players over 30 during Arsene Wenger’s time at the club but Sokratis insists he is in his prime. He said: “Mine is the best age for a defender, so for the next three or four years I would like to give everything for the team.
“With Borussia, with Milan, with Genoa, for 10 years now I have been outside Greece and I have experience.
“I feel very good and I’m working on the pitch and off it to help all the young guys to be very good with us.” It was at Dortmund that Sokratis played under Jurgen Klopp and with Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierreemerick Aubameyang.
He added: “Klopp was a very good coach.
“Out on the pitch his mentality is to win, off it he was very friendly with the players and I’m very happy I had two years with him.
“Auba and Miki were very important in me joining Arsenal. It is like something more than friends.
“We were together in Borussia and they’re very good players. They were a good part of my decision to come here.”