Arsenal: 5 questions Mikel Arteta must answer

2. Can he prevent the individual errors?

Arteta certainly helped bolster Arsenal’s defensive record upon his arrival. Arteta has been in charge for 15 games in all competitions. His team has conceded just 12 goals and kept seven clean sheets. In the 15 games prior to Arteta’s arrival, excluding the Everton draw which came the day after his appointment was officially unveiled, Arsenal conceded 27 goals, almost 2.5 times as many. They also earned just one clean sheet which came in the first of those 15 games on October 10th.

However, while Arteta has made significant progress in this area, there was still one issue that plagued the defence, individual errors. The Olympiakos and Everton matches were perhaps the best examples of this. Failing to mark at set-pieces, not tracking runners, poor communication and organisation, simple jobs not being executed well. Arsenal conceded silly goals, as they have done for more than a decade.

This was continued in their defeat to Brentford in a behind-closed-doors friendly on Wednesday. All three of Brentford’s goals stemmed directly from an awful individual error, with Alexandre Lacazette, David Luiz, Rob Holding, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and others all culpable at one point or another. Can Arteta somehow turn a group of players renowned for their propensity to make individual errors into a consistent and dependable defence? It is no easy task, but he will have to if Arsenal are to make a run at the Champions League places.