Quote Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn View Post
Just a leettle bit lacking sharpness of sanity because it's a pretty insane situation in defence at Arsenal. All the years we've known the defence is lacking both in terms of players and the tactics and nothing done about it. We brought TV in and one more significant CB at that moment could have made all the difference. We've done the same again this season. It's actually worrying now how much faith everyone is pinning on Mertesacker before he's even played a game, but let's just hope that works out. Flavs makes the point Kos has done as well as any other of our defenders and that's true enough. It;s also the main problem, doing as well as any of our defenders doesn't make you a good defender. Most of our players are 90% good enough, that's the problem. That 10% we are lacking costs us over and over again. It's not just a case of us being unable to compete for the big names. Cahill has only really become a big(ish) name in the last season, we looked at him last season and wouldn't pay the lower price. Cahill's an average PL CB from what I can see. He's sound. He doesn't have those flaws that Kos and JD demonstrate. We should have signed him, we needed him. But Wenger's doing it again, investing his hope in flawed players who aren't suited to this league. And we'll inevitable get the same result as last time.
Rather have Cahill than Djourou, no argument there but the major problem has been lack of organisation at the back as we only had one defender that could take a bit of responsibiltiy on that front, adding one more makes our options at the back a lot more secure, one of Merts or Vermaelen can form a good partnership with Kos and maybe help keep Djourou's head in the right place (i.e. out of the place it seems to get stuck in).Ofc, if it turns out Mertesacker is shit then we're in trouble.