Very simple. Does the club have the players that could win the league? Is it the coaching that is to blame? With better defensive coaching, conceding less goals, more pressing play, and better tactics, would the team be challenging for the league? Like yesterday for example. Bale is the biggest threat on the wing. I would have played Theo up against him, to use his pace, and because he tracks back well, helping out Sagna to nullify Bale's threat. I also would have man-marked Modric to stifle the creativity. What would you do differently? Are "better" players required, or are the problems more tactical and coaching?
Good question. I think we're still one or two players short of a title winning squad, but I also don't think we're that far off either. What is costing us dearly though is calamitous defending. You'd have to say that this comes down to the coaching. I'd really like Wenger to accept some help with the defensive side of the game and bring in Keown and Bould as defensive coaches. If we get the defending right, then it takes the pressure off the rest of the team who can concentrate on attacking At the moment, our poor defending is stifling the whole team.
No, sadly That and an absence of coaching too Yes but this is not the MO of this manager....... We fall down on defensive coaching and tactics Our team bar a small handful of players do not cover a lot of area. Mikel Arteta is one of the few currently who will track back and forth. I think we might have been able to neutralise some of the Spurs players a bit better but we need proper coaching. I read somewhere that in training we tend to concentrate on technique and not tactics. While Szczesny had said that he had been working with Santos and Mertesacker separately on defence, it isn't quite the same as guidance by a defensive coach. Arsene takes a different view........
The thing is though that when the whole team presses (like we have at times against Chelsea and recently Olympiakos) we actually play excellently and really seem like a title winning team. If we pressed and sorted out the defensive instability (with coaching, yes, but the midfield completely throws them under the bus at times with their lack of cover) then I feel we would be excellent. Changing the formation to 442 might also help as we don't really have the players for 433
Yes Mr Shoelaces but currently we do not have a team that can play in the manner by which we beat Chelsea at The Emirates last year and remember, this same team threw it all away between March and May. I wonder what sort of motivational talk takes place before matches?
You are basically asking could another manager/coach mould the players squad into winners and i think the answer is YES. If say SAF had our players i think he and his coaching staff could turn our players into winners. Its not the players its the coaching and the system that is the problem.
I think we are short of quality throughout the team. I would prefer to have another quality midfielder, another quality striker and some more strength in depth in the RB and CB positions.
For me, the problem is unfortunately becomming the philosophy. Arsenal set up to play "the Arsenal way" and expect teams to counteract that. Which they do. There is no set-up to neutralise the major threats of the opposition, or play tactically to your opponents weaknesses. This is down to the defensive set-up really. You want the players to know how to defend against certain types of player. Like wingers - show them out wide. Attacking Midfield - stick tight and don't let them get the ball. This doesn't seem to be happening. If Arsenal had a solid defensive unit, they'd be so much better. The defense is the foundation, the building block, and they're struggling. The tactics are suspect, and being exploited EVERY game because the team is far too predictable.
I can't be the tactics that are the problem as Barca play pretty similarly to us and they are good defensively.
Barca play at a much higher tempo and press all over the pitch - right from the front. Someone said recently that Barca don't have to work hard and cover a lot of ground to win the ball back, as they barely ever pass the ball more than 10 yards. Arsenal started a couple of seasons ago with a fantastic pressing game, but it slowly faded out. This season it's very much lacking. Bring that in, high tempo and plenty of pressing, and they'll win more games. They don't work hard enough to win the ball back. It is a tactical issue.
Well Robin, Barca presumably know how to defend. Sadly we have all but lost the ability to do so effectively over the course of a game. In almost any match save perhaps for a meeting with Bolton and the like, you always think that we could concede. At least I do and did so yesterday even after we had equalised and especially when Sagna was injured. That was how it felt when we played Blackburn. At no point was there a feeling that the opposition would not be able to come back at us. If we can avoid falling in this department, it would make quite a big difference. Unfortunately though, this is a problem we have had for sometime now so in that regard, we are not quite like Barca.
Its a combination of bad tactics and wrong personnel. WE MUST defend better as a team and cut out the individual mistakes, this is a n issue of personnel AND tactics. Instead of trying to walk the ball in the net we should go for goal much quicker. This is mostly a tactical issue but a lot of the time it is a personnel issue. Bottom line though, the tactics we are using are not correct and haven't been for years. We are not clinical, we are not direct enough.
