Fantasy Football Potential – Sokratis Papastathopoulos

Arsenal have made the big name signing of Sokratis Papastathopoulos from Borussia Dortmund for a fee in the region of £18 million. The Greek international brings some much needed solidity to the Arsenal central defence.

Sokratis has 79 caps for his country, scoring three goals, one of which coming in Greece’s 1-1 draw with Costa Rica in the 2014 World Cup. He does have a few pieces of silverware under his belt including his only league title which came for Milan in 2011.

Sokratis said:

“I feel very good. It’s my first day here, everything is special. It’s a beautiful moment and I’m very happy that I will be here for the next years. Arsenal is one of the three biggest teams in the Premier League and one very big club. It has a lot of fans and a very big history.”

Fantasy Premier League Potential (5.5m)

Sokratis has been priced at £5.5m which I think is more than fair for him. That price for a nailed on starter in a top six side is always good and he does have the potential to score every now and then. The last season he failed to score was Milan’s title winning campaign all the way back in 2010/11.

He is already proving to be reasonably popular with over 4% of Fantasy Premier League managers selecting him and I could see that number increasing dramatically after Arsenal’s first couple of fixtures. I would probably wait for the two games to pass before bringing the Greek into your teams.

Arsenal’s first five fixtures are as follows: Manchester City (H), Chelsea (A), West Ham (H), Cardiff (A) and Newcastle (A). As above mentioned it’s a torrid beginning but Arsenal’s players like Sokratis will be flooding into teams from gameweek 3 and onwards.

Written by Harry Clark (@HarryClark67)