Talk about a baptism by fire. Not as bad as say having to face one or two north west-based clubs I suppose but all the same, quite a burden on his shoulders. He does have the experience of leading though and that should help. A good opportunity for us to get behind one of our new boys. Do you think buying a second CB over the summer would have helped pals or just as case of adding yet another unknown quantity into the fray?
I rated this signing the best of the lot by Wenger this Summer, but on closer scrutiny here's a guy who has never played in England, was recently dropped by his country, and as already said will have language problems initially, so is he the big white hope I expected ? He might be, he might not, but he has to be better than the alternatives....
He is well able for it, hugely experienced and I doubt he will be fearing the opposition. We are in a bad patch but if we cannot beat Swansea at home, no disrespect to them then we are in serious bother. We should hopefully completely dictate the game and with a fit RVP and Walcotts current scoring form we will be ok. Looking forward to seeing how Arteta approaches the game, if he starts.
How did Squeaky become so bad? playing for a top Spanish team and experienced French international to dribbling buffoon overnight, hope it's not the Arsenal effect of turning good or decent players into nervous wrecks with our defensive woes.
I wouldn't exactly call a home debut against Swansea (no offence intended to Swansea) as a baptism of fire. Perhaps if his first game was away at Man U/chelsea this could be the case. All things considered this home home match against Swansea - a newly promoted team that hasnt got off to the best of starts and has struggled to score - is probably the best possible introduction for our newly hired guns. In a perfect world our new signings would have probably been better served from a few weeks training with the team, but then again, when was the last time Arsenal ever did things the easy way?
''In a perfect world our new signings would have probably been better served from a few weeks training with the team, but then again, when was the last time Arsenal ever did things the easy way?'' Broken record time again but why the transfer window doesn't close at end of July is beyond me, we got shafted by Cesc and Nasri which unsettled our pre-season/early season and we in turn unsettled Everton, Southampton, Werder Bremen etc etc etc. All of this could be avoided with an earlier deadline day - at the end of the day our season could have been over before transfer deadline day had we not stumbled past Udinese
He's German, so he'll probably speak better Englsh than most of the people on here. Just because probably 90% of English can't speak another language, doesn't mean the rest of the world don't.
That was a freak result and we had almost an entire first team out, plus some of the backup players too. It won't happen again.
I would have liked us to have signed Cahill too, I hope we go back for him in January. I think we need 4 top CB's. Vermaelen, Mertesacker, Koscielney and Cahill would fit the bill. Djourou and Miquel pushing for a first team place. Squillaci is not good enough, he is a liabilty and makes the whole defence nervous.
Which team was weaker when you lost in the FA Cup? http://www.arsenal.com/match-menu/3374167/first-team/manchester-united-v-arsenal?tab=report
We don't need 6 CB's. What we need is one good partnership to develop that is uninterrupted by injuries, Mertesacker-Vermaelen seems to be a good fit.
Djourou is taking a lot of stick lately, but before his injury last year he was solid for us. He was also part of a very stingy Swiss defence with Senderos a few years back and I can't think that was due to Senderos! Very often the CBs get labelled as inept because of mistakes further up the field or by the defence as a whole. They just happen to be the last defender when the goal is scored. Others are called great, because they make last ditch tackles they would never have had to make, if they were in the right postion in the first place. I think he is definitely good enough and with Per, Kos, Iggy and Vermaelen we now probably, as a whole, have the deepest and the best CB line up in the premiership.
