Forgotten Wenger signing has sealed his Arsenal legacy with Haaland face block | OneFootball

One of the last signings ever made by Arsene Wenger might be one of the first names on the Arsenal trophy parade guest list.

“He’s not ready to play for us. We’ll give him out on loan,” Wenger said of Konstantinos Mavropanos in January 2018.

This was before a slight U-turn saw the Greek lose on his Premier League debut against Manchester United that April, cruise in a 5-0 thrashing of Burnley and end his first season in England with a dreadful mistake and 15th-minute red card in a defeat to Leicester.

Mavropanos was never ready to play for Arsenal. He made only five more appearances before being loaned out thrice and sold for a small profit in the summer of 2022.

But his Gunners legacy was amplified by a totemic performance against Manchester City.

From his towering headed equaliser to his consummate handling of Erling Haaland, this was the culmination of Mavropanos’ rise from scapegoat to cult hero.

No player made more clearances (10), and his four blocked shots were one more than the game’s 28 other players managed combined. Mavropanos matched those efforts with three blocked shots after the 89th minute.

For one of them, he managed to accommodate half of the ball’s dimensions with his actual face and live to tell however much of the tale he could remember.

Jarrod Bowen said after the game that the 28-year-old has “got speed, he’s physical, he doesn’t mind putting his head on the line and getting tackles in,” as well as offering “something different”.

This was certainly that. As Haaland finally got the time, space and connection he had sought all game, Mavropanos stood remarkably firm in resistance.

It was the spiritual opposite of Riccardo Calafiori’s improvised brilliance hours earlier, but no less effective in thwarting the opponent and ultimately boosting Arsenal.

After dispatching his shootout-winning penalty against Brentford with an absurd amount of plombs, the rehabilitation of Mavropanos’ image in the eyes of the West Ham faithful was completed across 90 combative minutes, with that the defining image.

Wenger cannot possibly have envisaged Mavropanos winning Arsenal the Premier League when he joined the back of a centre-half pecking order including Rob Holding, Calum Chambers, Per Mertesacker and Sead Kolasinac.

But he has grown into a leader capable of boosting the Gunners’ title hopes while simultaneously quite literally heading West Ham’s survival charge. Mavro-thanos is inevitable.