I know that after a fantastic week, you may be surprised that I want to point out a negative? I watched the game yesterday, and I was again surprised how we just cannot defend! I don't think our defenders are that bad, I just believe their positioning is great. I also believe that we struggle to defend from midfield. Sorry for the negatives!
I think it was the midfield that caused the problems, Liverpool definitely outworked us in that area.
TBF we had TV 5 who was not fully fit, Gibbs who is not really match fit, so its expected we'd struggle abit also the midfield as usual did not help.Originally Posted by Lord Nelson
Good points! Totally agree with your comment about the midfield lack of defending. Wiltshire will help us next season. Not sure Arteta or Ramsay are the answer long term! Anyway! What a great weekend for footy! Especially with spuds losing!
i actually think gibbs was alright and sagna was a rock as usual.
a couple of times gibbs tracked back well and made some last ditch tackles.
the problem is the midfield.
you can have the best defense in the world but if your midfield dont help out and the opposition keep going at you then you will always make mistakes, especially if the opposition make wave after wave of attack. one of them is bound to lead to a mistake or show you up.
First half Gibbs left too much space yet again behind him and Kos had his worst half for a while.
Much more organised and solid second half.
With everyone fit, the back four should be:
Sagna-Kos-Merts-Santos
Suarez's movement and constant cheating was causing the issues as Song had done his usual thing and just wandered off so the CB's were having to step out to cover allowing Liverpool even more space.
Clever tactic and if Wenger ever actually looked at what the other team he might have done something to change it
You can't be too surprised by now, surely.
It's weird. I think with Koscielny, Vermaelen, Mertesacker, Sagna and even Santos and Jenkinson proving to be good players, I think we have a decent defence. I don't just mean decent defenders, I mean that we generally defend quite well. Obviously the game at Anfield didn't prove that to be the case even though we only conceded 1 which is about the going rate at Anfield. I think we have shown signs of some defensive maturity. I mean we can actually clear set-pieces at a respectable rate which never looked possible a couple of seasons back.
YET we concede a lot of goals. And our attack is nowhere near as fluid IMO. We have an average midfield (especially creatively) and are desperately missing Wilshere. Yet we have scored more goals at this stage of the season than we had in 03/04.
I think we're just going to have to accept that we're going to be defensively naive as long as Wenger's in charge. And that, somehow, we're never going to struggle for goals when Wenger's in charge. A better balance would see us improve. But in fairness to Arsene and Arsenal, nobody else has looked too great defensively this season either.
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