Arsenal: There are no more defensive excuses, and that’s a good thing

Arsenal’s defense needs to be fixed, and it can be fixed. Going forward, Unai Emery has no more excuses for giving up as many goals as they have been.

For the past two years, it’s been one excuse after another regarding why Arsenal‘s defense is so poor. “Well, Laurent Koscielny is hurt.” “Well, Rob Holding is hurt.” “Well, Ainsley Maitland-Niles is learning to defend still.” “Well, Sead Kolasinac is attack oriented.” “Well, Calum Chambers still has to find his groove.”

I get it, that’s part of the growing process. But starting the year as we did, seeing Chambers excel at centerback and then reverting to the same style of leaky defense that screwed us last year, made me wonder what hop we had of seeing substantial improvement this season.

Unai Emery’s odd reliance on David Luiz and Sokratis, neither of whom looked worthy of the call in the least, though they did boast a high degree of experience, seemed like a foregone conclusion that we’d be stuck with for awhile.

And we were. For eight matches we struggled with this centerback duo, surrendering goals and struggling to inspire any kind of confidence at the back.

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But the excuses were there. Rob Holding was hurt. Hector Bellerin and Kieran Tierney were hurt too. Calum Chambers… well, I still don’t know what Emery doesn’t see in Calum Chambers. There were moving pieces, a lot of moving pieces, and not a lot of them were sticking in place.

This international break is the perfect chance for Emery to do what needs to be done on this defense and pull a complete change. Get the old out—the ineffective—and bring in the new. Because even though we can’t call it “the effective” yet, we can definitely call it the exciting. The full of potential. The unknown. Which in this case, is far better than the known, which involves porous positioning and poor decision making.

There are no more excuses. Everyone is healthy. No one is weighing the club down. Even Shkodran Mustafi looks good. So let’s get some changes going on here. Let’s move things around. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the best possible option is a Tierney-Chambers-Holding-Bellerin back line. But Emery’s insistence on starting Luiz may get in the way.

Whatever happens, there’s nowhere to hide. Emery knows his options are there. He knows how ineffective his current side has been and he needs to adjust accordingly.