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A Look At Arsenal’s Leaky Defensive Strategies
So once again we are looking back at a weekend that involved us playing in a winnable match that we just didn’t take advantage of, so what went wrong for Arsenal this time? We’re going to have a look at the start of all of these defensive issues.
Calum Chambers
It seems harsh to isolate one defender out of a generally bad bunch at the moment but I am going to highlight young rightback/centre back/ not sure what he does Calum Chambers. He is still finding his feet in the starting line-up of this Arsenal side but his performance against Stoke left a lot to be desired.
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When the ball came in from the right hand side after only 15 seconds of gametime chambers had the easiest job to do. Put head to ball and remove the ball from play. Instead the Arsenal man decided it would be best to miss the ball entirely and pretty much duck under it to allow Bellerin to make a complete hash of clearing it and allow it to fall to Peter Crouch only 5 yards from goal.
Chambers then proceeded to spend most of the afternoon draped around Crouch’s neck, and although I can understand it is annoying to be constantly beaten in the air by someone constantly fouling him is not going to help your cause. And although he didn’t deserve a yellow for either of the offences he was guilty of trying too hard for most of the match, and ran the risk of picking up cards all game.
Stop the supply
The second goal was a series of awful errors from two Arsenal defenders.
Firstly Kieran Gibbs was guilty of not putting the crosser under pressure at all whilst he held the ball out on Stoke’s right hand side, and then for putting no challenges at all as Walters sent a simple ball to the near post.
Then, despite Bojan being behind 3 of our defenders, the former Barcelona man popped up first to slide the ball home. For me Mertesacker has shown exactly why he is struggling in the Premier League in attempting to defend the goal. If Mertesacker is the centre back on that side he has to stop balls into the near post, and his speed and positional awareness was not good enough.
Bojan also ghosted past Ramsey and Flamini, who were defending in a line, and because all three of them were watching the ball as the cross came in there was no communication or urgency.
It was a good finish by Bojan, but the ball should never have got to him in the first place.
Set piece misery
If the first goal was avoidable, and the second goal was dire, then the third goal was of a schoolboy levels of incompetency. A corner was floated in and no fewer than 5 separate Arsenal players attempted to move slowly towards the ball, who were then all beaten by Crouch. The ball fell to Walters who was free around 4 yards out from goal.
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So not only were all 5 players not doing anything good, the fact we didn’t just stick Mertesacker on Crouch is pretty disturbing. Everyone else mark a man and make sure he doesn’t get the ball. Pretty simple.
The defending of the set piece was enough to make our defensive coach cry. If we actually had one that seemed to take any notice he would have done anyway.
Get a tackle in
Arsenal’s Back four only made 1 successful challenge in the entire 90 minutes. 1. That is a pitiful return against a team who are going to be in your face for the entire 90 minutes, and it just highlights our defensive ineptitude at the moment because we;re just not putting up enough resistance right now.
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