49 goals conceded: What is wrong with the defence?

[Camel]

Besides all mentioned above reasons like whole team not defending as a unit, way too many individual errors, holding midfielders not shielding defense we have one bad problem. Team is mentally weak - when we have lead we often squander it, sometimes right away.
When we're winning by one goal margin we seem to always concede. No ball retention, no sensible time-wasting(only Szczesny tries to do it), all suddenly become nervous and run like headless chickens. 2010-11 was nightmarish with 4:4 draw with bar-codes. This season wasn't much better, waht's really irritating that even underdogs easily score like Fulham.
One positive - during our 7 games winning streak we got many results in Fergie time, that's a very reassuring sign.

 

[Jbruin]

Besides all mentioned above reasons like whole team not defending as a unit, way too many individual errors, holding midfielders not shielding defense we have one bad problem. Team is mentally weak - when we have lead we often squander it, sometimes right away.
When we're winning by one goal margin we seem to always concede. No ball retention, no sensible time-wasting(only Szczesny tries to do it), all suddenly become nervous and run like headless chickens. 2010-11 was nightmarish with 4:4 draw with bar-codes. This season wasn't much better, waht's really irritating that even underdogs easily score like Fulham.
One positive - during our 7 games winning streak we got many results in Fergie time, that's a very reassuring sign.

I'll never accept this as an example of our notorious bottling of leads, that was pure robbery by Phil Dowd.

 

[Camel]

Besides all mentioned above reasons like whole team not defending as a unit, way too many individual errors, holding midfielders not shielding defense we have one bad problem. Team is mentally weak - when we have lead we often squander it, sometimes right away.
When we're winning by one goal margin we seem to always concede. No ball retention, no sensible time-wasting(only Szczesny tries to do it), all suddenly become nervous and run like headless chickens. 2010-11 was nightmarish with 4:4 draw with bar-codes. This season wasn't much better, waht's really irritating that even underdogs easily score like Fulham.
One positive - during our 7 games winning streak we got many results in Fergie time, that's a very reassuring sign.

I'll never accept this as an example of our notorious bottling of leads, that was pure robbery by Phil Dowd.

We can blame Dowd or Barton, but throwing away 4:0 lead due to poor refereeing is just excuse. Then we had 2:0 and 3:1 lead with a **** etc.

 

[dka1]

I think many before me hit the nail on the head.

Our midfield is not shielding our back 5 properly enough and we do not seem to consistently apply our pressing game or defend as a unit consistently enough.

I also wonder what type of training the defenders go through because we seem to make some fundamental mistakes in defence more often than is pleasing.

 

[Swallow]

Defenses become solid if they are made up of excellent or very good players who play together for a considerable length of time. We have the players but we have never really had the chance to let them build partnerships. They are too often injured. I do not know if it is down to lack of luck or the incompetence of our medical team but I think it cannot get worse than this year. Hopefully, we'll have everyone fit for a long time next season so we'll see massive improvement in the overall performance of the team.

I must also add that I do not want any of our current defenders and keepers replaced bar Squillaci and Vito. For the past few years our number of goals conceded has kept increasing from one season to the other. Most people attributed it to the lack of adequate personnel but I think it was because we did too much cut and paste within that period. We hardly entered a new season with the same pair of first choice central defenders and that might account for our woes.Let's keep what we have for a change and see where it will take us.

 

[11211goon]

Re: 49 goals conceded : What is wrong with the defence?

It's a combination of things really - too many individual errors from our defenders, our left-backs are average at best(people love Santos for some reason, I like defenders who can defend first, he can't), midfield is porous as ****, Arteta helps because he is one of our few good mids at the club but even so, we haven't achieved a perfect balance in there imo, and final one, lack of real quality in attack and the subsequent need to flood those areas with more players to make things happen(Song, full-backs etc), compensating for our lack of quality. Barcelona can do that but half of their players aren't brain-dead and breaking down moves every other minute.

Tend to agree with this plus the fact most top teams start to defend from the top, defence starts with responsible attacking (finishing chances) plus pressing the opposition in their half. But probably single most important factor in conceding goals in AFC is complete lack of communication plus huge lack of confidence in your next man, and that is scary thing to work with. It would take a serious reapparoach in the training department to work on defending crosses, defending counters, defending balls over head of last line, coordinating offsides etc. Wenger, as we know, does not give too much for that stuff and it takes its toll.

 

[ArsenesNO1Fan]

Defending is a team effort and we generally defend as a team, ie our wingers generally track back, as does our CAM. But not scoring while using an offensive formation and chasing games means gaps will be left at the back.

People will blame Song for 'not shielding the defence' despite him being statistically by far our best defensive none defender. Let's be clear Arteta who's been excellent for as a deep lying player does not defend aswell as Song. I think it's more a team issue overall

As a team we have passengers, Arshavin when he played was a massive luxury as he refused to track back. Ramsey I like but is a passenger at the moment because he spoiled our build up play, fluffed about 90% of his shots (look at the stats) and rarely got his foot into challenges (although he rectified that at Stoke so there's hope for him). Walcott is a passenger because in possession he either scores or does nothing the rest of the game, in fairness to him he tracks back and crosses well but costs us in poor build up play.

So the problem with the likes of Ramsey/Walcott being starters is it makes us easy to sit back and defend against and take us on the counter. It means we don't score as much and have gaps that get exploited.

Think about this, if our midfield really is that woeful, how did it dominate Sp**s and Man City?

The other problem is our fullbacks have been injured or coming back from injury, this has hurt us defensively and offensively. Verminator has had a poor season by his standards and that's partly due to position switching.

So in conclusion the problem with our defence is our attack

 

[11211goon]

I tend to agree it is a team issue, but if we have to pick specifics, it is:

- Song: great player to me, but would benefit vastly from a stricter coach
- Fullbacks: total displacement, especially on the counters
- Centre-back communication: in critical times, non-existent

 

[Camel]

One big issue is that we have shaky goalkeeper and that doesn't build confidence in our defenders. They know if they make mistake they almost certainly be punished with a goal. Hart and De Gea/Lindegaard many times save their respective teams when defenders blunder.

 

[GunnerBP]

Implying that our defense has less confidence in Szczesny than our previous goalkeepers since Lehman left is just laughable.

Szczesny obviously has faults, but he far better than what we've had and he should only get better. He is not the cause of our defensive woes this season.

The problem with the defense is that during the first half of the season we pretty much had a brand new team that needed to gel, and then midway through the season all of our fullbacks were injured and that messed up the shape of the defense and the entire team. This is pretty obvious.

Also, De Gea was a joke the first half of the season, so saying he had a better season the Szczesny is kind of a joke.

 

[ArsenesNO1Fan]

I tend to agree it is a team issue, but if we have to pick specifics, it is:

- Song: great player to me, but would benefit vastly from a stricter coach
- Fullbacks: total displacement, especially on the counters
- Centre-back communication: in critical times, non-existent

OK how about maybe the midfield axis not being quite strong enough of a defensive unit. IE if Song or Arteta are out neither have a partner defensively capable and even together Arteta isn't that defensively capable

Arteta defensively doesn't have the best stats compared to the best, ie tackles per game, interceptions are much lower than Song and M'Vila. Put Song with M'Vila together and you have 2 players that will press harder, win the ball back quicker and cover better

The downside to that would be neither Song or M'Vila have the ball retention of Arteta

We play with B2B midfielders so the clamour for an out and out DM and shipping out Song, which we hear is ill founded in my view

Another point is, are we that defensively weak anyway with our first choice team?

 

[oba101]

The first team is quite poor defensively. And I don't think it's the defenders that are responsible for 60% of the goals we concede anyway. It's Song jogging back lazily or Walcott not tracking back or the team attacking with 5 men when we're 2-1 up with 5 mins to go, etc etc.

We have varied types of defenders in almost every position which is good, Per is calm, Thomas attacks the ball, Kos cleans up behind him, Santos is great at attacking, Gibbs is great at defending (eg. THAT tackle that kept us in the CL), Sagna is great all round and Djourou is great nowhere lol.

Basically my point is the problem is the team itself is poor defensively. Laziness, complacency and inconsistency are our greatest faults.

 

[AFC-Phil]

Gibbs is great at defending (eg. THAT tackle that kept us in the CL

Except he's certainly not. The core aspect for a great defender is positioning. Gibbs' positioning is really quite poor.

It'll improve with experience, no doubt, but it's naive to consider him great at defending.

 

[Camel]

Except he's certainly not. The core aspect for a great defender is positioning. Gibbs' positioning is really quite poor.

It'll improve with experience, no doubt, but it's naive to consider him great at defending.

Looks like one successful tackle made Gibbs the second Tony Adams in the eyes of some. We have a great keeper, he would've saved that strike anyway, amirite?

 

[jmsmtthw28]

Biggest problem was instabiltiy within the team and the need to find a new shape with Cesc and Nasri leaving
Other factors like poor defending, new players like Mert, Jenkinson & Santos getting used to the league contributed

 

[Rain Dance]

see the German team?
same formation with us 4-2-3-1, same personnel type (Khedira and Bastian as balance Özil AM, Muller the technical winger and Podolski the inside forward),
but their side has more discipline, and guess what? lower defense line.

 

[FeedTheOx]

The biggest problem...by far. Was the the instability in our defence. There were too many injuries and they were happening to regularly.
Look at Newcastle for example, at the start of the season they had the same back five for the first ten or so games and rarely conceded a goal and this began their push to finish higher than expected.
Also, when we had the most stable period of our back five staying the same:
Szczesny

Sagna---Kos-----Verm----Gibbs

We had a massive run of wins starting with Sp**s and we tightened up. So I believe injuries were the source of another problem in the team.

 

[pikey2000]

My personal feelings are that the stats are clouded somewhat by the 8-2 thrashing that UTD gave us and the fact we played so long without a recognised full back on either side of the pitch.

Those were both freak incidents that should not occur again for a long time - so without any changes I think our defensive stats will improve this season.

That said I do feel like our midfield need to be more tactically aware, having watched the germans and the post match debate I felt Strachan made a fair point about the placing too much emphasis on needing a dedicated "holding midfield player" - the Germans play with Khediera and Schweinsteiger - neither are dedicated to DM, they work well together choosing opportunities to push depending on which of them has the better opportunity. They almost never are seen pushing at the same time and you will see many examples of them interchanging between one sitting and one pushing - it works well and no-one is chained to being a DM solely.

I feel this is what Wenger wants our team to do with Song/Arteta but when you took Arteta's intelligence out of the picture we suddenly looked open again as Song imo doesn't have that same game sense that Arteta has, so you would see a Song/Ramsey combo both pushing

This and our lack of ball retention, for long periods of the season Ramsey in AM didnt keep ball well, Theo wide right was the same and Arshavin in the very early part of the season - we had 3 offensive players who were not keeping the ball - heaped massive pressure on the back four.

Sorry for such a long post. Clearly there is still a lot to work on for our club

 

[DontPushMe]

This was a serious problem this year. Suprisingly it hasnt been addressed at all. When you go through our individual players, you would think we are strong defensively. You cant necessarily pinpoint a guy who needs to go from the starting xi (maybe gibbs), but we conceeded 49 goals. Somewhere around 10th in the league, and way off the pace of Man U & City.

Something needs to be done, help at DM is a good idea, M'Vila maybe isnt that guy as it seems wenger is having doubts on his quality, Biglia any better? Javi Martinez is dream world. Something needs to be done.

Maybe its just that we were injury plagued (though that seems to be the case every year) but if thats the case we need more quality to ensure that an injury doesnt ruin us again. Santos/Gibbs good enough? We have 3 quality CBs and Djourou (provided he stays) is a solid 4th option CB. Vertonghen you would think would help but we don't seem to be in for him.

Will Sagna be back in August? If not, whos covering? We may be setting up the same crap that cost us last year.

 

[Le Professeur]

Besides all mentioned above reasons like whole team not defending as a unit, way too many individual errors, holding midfielders not shielding defense we have one bad problem. Team is mentally weak - when we have lead we often squander it, sometimes right away.
When we're winning by one goal margin we seem to always concede. No ball retention, no sensible time-wasting(only Szczesny tries to do it), all suddenly become nervous and run like headless chickens. 2010-11 was nightmarish with 4:4 draw with bar-codes. This season wasn't much better, waht's really irritating that even underdogs easily score like Fulham.
One positive - during our 7 games winning streak we got many results in Fergie time, that's a very reassuring sign.

I'll never accept this as an example of our notorious bottling of leads, that was pure robbery by Phil Dowd.

Couldn't agree more. Was and am still absolutely disgusted when I think about it.

Implying that our defense has less confidence in Szczesny than our previous goalkeepers since Lehman left is just laughable.

Szczesny obviously has faults, but he far better than what we've had and he should only get better. He is not the cause of our defensive woes this season.

The problem with the defense is that during the first half of the season we pretty much had a brand new team that needed to gel, and then midway through the season all of our fullbacks were injured and that messed up the shape of the defense and the entire team. This is pretty obvious.

Also, De Gea was a joke the first half of the season, so saying he had a better season the Szczesny is kind of a joke.

De Gea was top 3 in the league last season for saved shots. Szczesny bottom 3. De Gea > Szczezzers, unfortunately. At this moment in time at least.

My personal feelings are that the stats are clouded somewhat by the 8-2 thrashing that UTD gave us and the fact we played so long without a recognised full back on either side of the pitch.

Those were both freak incidents that should not occur again for a long time - so without any changes I think our defensive stats will improve this season.

Have to agree. Freak of a season really, first with the departures and then the injuries - who were, even by our standards, a tad ridiculous. Breaking your fibula twice in the same season, what's the chance really :|. And that's just Sagna.