Yeah, I remember that game, and Kos was doing fine against Zamora. Then Zamora moved over to the other side and instead of Kos going with him, he passed him over to TV. They ended up both playing the role they were worst at and, as you say, got owned, and were terrible. We made too many of those tactical blunders in games last year, but I'm not sure that it constitutes a player being "bad" exactly, and is more a mistake that can be fixed.
Possibly. There's no doubt the guy is a good footballer but I don't honestly think he's a very good defender. It's perhaps a reason for why the national team is so poor but being excellent technically but with the physique of someone like Koscielny is rarely possible nowadays for defenders in this country. Against the likes of Zamora and Holt, as much as he is better overall than both, he will struggle.
Cheers Toledo The problem with these kinds of 'so and so is great' threads is that no matter how well thought out an argument is if it goes against the general consensus it just gets shouted down. As someone who has trained professional athletes in my humble opinion Koscielney does not have the right physical attributes to make it as a TOP class centreback. (fullback or DM maybe) I've given valid reasoning (besides the obvious Goals conceded argument) and nobody has managed any kind of quality argument to the contrary.
Also anyone know how to do a cross the board poll? I'm thinking its only Arsenal fans that think Koscielney is 'World Class'
Well it may be a slightly weak argument, but we do play very well against teams that play without a big centre-forward. These often tend to be the "better teams in the premiership, so Kos does well against Welbeck/Rooney, Tevez/Aguero, Torres/Mata etc, etc. where his speed and footwork are more desirable and his lack of strength and size less so. He did quite well against Drogba as well, which makes sense because although he is very big and strong his main threat is still on the ground. Clubs playing a big striker ddn't do very well as a whole last year and so it remains to be seen whether the big slow ugly striker is going away, or whether Arsenal will have to develop a plan B for those teams. I noticed at the end of last year we tried (with little success) falling back into the two banks of 4 and abandoning man-marking for the weaker teams. I suspect the coaches at Arsenal understand this weakness and will at least try to take steps to deal with it.
Another stalker to add to the list then, it seems. Also, TheBear, the reason I haven't responded to you in a manner you think you deserve, is because I took the time to type out the OP, for you to come in and completely disregard every point I made, and go off on a different tangent about how you're a personal trainer, or what ever the **** it is you do (I couldn't really give a ****, if I wanted to know about your **** life, I would ask you), and to start banging on about, all that matter is the numbers, i.e. the amount of goals conceded, it's a very narrow minded way of looking at things. Stop going on about Koscielny not being big and muscular enough to be a top class CB, that is the stupidest thing I have read. In his first season with us, I agree, he wasn't at the physical conditioning he should have been, but he has improved his physique greatly, he doesn't seem to have that problem much any more, besides, the burden of dealing with the 'big physical' striker goes down to Vermaelen or Mertesacker, the great thing about Koscielny is that he can keep up perfectly with all the agile and tricky forwards. He clearly has a strong core anyway.
Koscielny isn't any more of a light weight than Steve Bould was and he didn't do too badly, even though the refs gave less protection to players back in the day.
I wondered what had happened to Ali G, he's re-appeared in the guise of a gooner!. Please keep posting Ali, er I mean Zlatanx2. I love the way you insult yourself.
You are the stalker of everyone here, you attach yourself to a board and talk nonsense. The fact that you are pretending to be me and to know my friend BringBackBenitez shows that you are a fool and a liar. Your football knowledge is also questionable.
Got to agree with this, one of the stupidest posts I have seen on here for a while Vermaelen was our worst CB last season - considering Djourou had a handful of games at CB as well. If your stats apply to Kos then they MUST apply to Vermaelen who played in many of these games too. Why you choose to be selective shows bias beyond belief. Koscielny may be weaker but he is quicker and a better defender than Vermaelen. I kow who I would prefer to be up against as a striker and it isn't Kos.
It was absolutely clear to anyone that actually watched the games last season Koscielny had way better performances than Vermaelen (who was an evident liability in more games than i care to recall). I have given up arguing with TheBear on this though, he made it clear he'll hit up every logical fallacy in the book to keep the argument going. If there was any real correlation why our defense improved later in the season it was Sagna. And the fact that Kos was paired with Mert (the guy on his first season) in the patch of season where we were **** in all departments (incl. non-existent midfield). I would still like him to answer why he doesn't declare Szczesny the worst Arsenal goalkeeper of all times though, using the same reasoning... His stats turn out worse than Manone and Flappy... I suppose watching the ****ing games could be helpful?
There was a link that I posted a while back on another thread that analyzed defensive statistics for the 2010/11 season. In it, the stats showed that in terms of shots allowed, shots allowed on target, key passes allowed in the final third, and a couple of others Arsenal had clearly the best defense in the league. I don't have an issue with using statistics to make a point, but they CAN be misleading, and some of them, particularly defensive ones, seem to be particularly inconclusive. Because a tightly marked player never gets passed to, and because a defender playing well needs to make less tackles, the stats can be way off. With Arsenal's defense it seems that we play very solidly for long periods and then give away very soft easy goals with silly mistakes. I'm not sure how you rate a player that CAN play brilliantly but has lapses, over another that CAN'T ever play at the top level. All I can say is that on balance I would rather have the one that CAN play at the top level over the one that can't, because you would think that you could train the mistakes out of them.
Absolutely agree with this. The truth is Kos has had more bad games this Season than good. (Also -Zlatan ..If you go back and read I stated the "Koscielneys best performances tend to be in Europe against more technical sides" - I would say that includes Bayern.) .. and my argument still stands the Frenchman does poorly against the leagues more 'robust' teams. He deserves to keep his place though. Vermaelen has been poor of late.
