Sokratis Papastathopoulos has hinted that he could be back from injury sooner than expected, with Arsenal’s official line that he’s still being assessed ahead of Monday’s Leicester City match.

Earlier this week, Arsenal posted an update saying that Sokratis had some bruising on his ankle after international duty. At the time, they didn’t confirm whether the defender would be available for Monday’s game against Leicester, but Unai Emery said on Friday that it would be “difficult” for the defender to play.

However, on Friday night, Sokratis posted an update of his own on Instagram. He wrote “thanks for the quicker recovery” and mentioned the company assisting him with his ankle problem.

Hopefully, a quicker recovery means that he’ll be available for Monday’s match after all. You’d still expect Emery to go with Rob Holding and Shkodran Mustafi as his starting pair, but it would be good to at least have the Greek defender available from the bench, considering the lack of centre-back options in the squad.

It’ll be nice to have Laurent Koscielny and Konstantinos Mavropanos back in the next month, so every knock a defender picks up doesn’t have to be such a major drama anymore. Plus, we might finally get to see Koscielny and Sokratis together, who have a lot of potential as a pairing.