After all the defensive vows last season, Arsenal made a statement signing in Sokratis Papastathopoulos. Former Arsenal midfielder Ray Parlour tagged Sokratis as a ‘no-nonsense traditional defender’ and praised Arsenal in getting him from Borussia Dortmund.
Ray Parlour also compared the Greek beast to Arsenal legend Tony Adams.
Sokratis joined Arsenal for a fee believed to be around £15million, and Parlour believes that he will bring some ‘much-needed’ steel to defence.
After securing Sokratis, the Gunners now have three former Borussia Dortmund players – Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan the other two.
“Arsenal badly needed to improve their defence following last season and Emery has clearly made that a priority this summer,” Parlour told bWIN (via the Express).
“I think Sokratis is a good signing and he will be a no-nonsense, traditional defender in the mould of Tony Adams rather than someone who wants to play out from the back.
“Sokratis is very experienced and he’s a big game player with great leadership qualities.
“The fact he knows Aubameyang and Mkhitaryan so well is a bonus too.”
With Laurent Koscielny sidelined for some significant amount of time, Sokratis is expected to fit right into Arsenal’s defence with Konstantinos Mavropanos and Shkodran Mustafi fighting for other void place.
