Charlie Nicholas has claimed that players like Shkodran Mustafi are ‘not cut out’ for Arsenal.
Mustafi, a World Cup winner in 2014, joined the Gunners for £35 million back in 2016 from Valencia.
But the 28-year-old defender hasn’t been a huge hit with Arsenal fans, many of whom have wanted their club to sell him for a couple of years.
The Germany international, who earns £90,000 per week in North London [Spotrac], has improved since Mikel Arteta took the reins at the Emirates Stadium back in December.
But former Arsenal striker Nicholas has told Sky Sports that he doesn’t feel Mustafi belongs at the club.
He said: “We have a problem with identifying players. Then what we did is we started paying £30 million, £40m for Mustafi and defenders who in all honesty, no disrespect to them it’s only my opinion, are not cut out for Arsenal and have not been good enough.”
There’s every chance that Mustafi will still be an Arsenal player come next season; not because nobody is going to want him, but because Arteta made a point of giving every player a clean slate when he walked in the door and Mustafi, like Granit Xhaka for instance, has improved since then.
The Mustafi of the last six months hasn’t been making the outrageous, costly mistakes that were happening under Arsene Wenger and Unai Emery, so keeping him isn’t that unlikely.
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