Arsenal: Laurent Koscielny has first legit defensive gripe all year

Arsenal just plain sucked against West Ham, but nowhere did they suck worse than up top. Which gives the defense something to complain about for the first time… ever?

Perhaps the wackiest stat of the horrid loss to West Ham is that Arsenal did not register a single shot on target after the 68th minute. Not a single one. Here we have a team with two world class forwards and they could not manage to test the keeper a single time when it was needed most.

It was the theme of the day – this attack sucked. And it was a rare theme, because come hell or high water, even if we surrender five goals, we are at least going to score one. There’s too much firepower not to.

Not against West Ham, and captain Laurent Koscielny has done the captainly thing and singled out what the problem on the day was, holding nothing back:

“I think in the final third we needed to keep more calm and not try to find the final ball and to continue to play with movement,” he said, as quoted by the Metro.

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Honestly, if you’re looking for the single good thing to come out of this match, because there was probably only the one thing – it’s that the defense was remarkably solid in defending the final ball. I say remarkably, but keep in mind, that just means that they were competent. And they really were.

The back three of Mustafi, Sokratis and Koscielny did their part to absorb the pressure without feeling over-anxious to go abruptly snuff it out. They snapped into action when need be, but they weren’t rash or reckless. They defended the air well as a unit and used their bodies to shut down potentially deadly passing lanes.

I mean, West Ham only had three shots on target, with Rice’s being the only one with any gumption on it. The rest were quite tame efforts.

That comes from a solid defensive effort. And yes, I am quite happy with that, despite the loss. It actually feels good that the defense, Koscielny specifically, is griping about something that is different than the problems we have been having all year. Doesn’t it?

At the end of the day, a loss is a loss, and it was a pathetic one. But if nothing else, maybe we glimpsed some glimmer of hope in a defense that was an abject failure all year.