asajoseph
Established Member
The 'patently lacking' Lauren?
Come off it...
Come off it...
Shagin said:neil is a decent defender. i think he could be good at arsenal with some work. but thats my opinion and i wouldnt pay a huge amount for him either.
Gurgen said:JazzG said:asajoseph said:Lucas Neill? Surely that's a joke?
Exactly what I thought when I read this article.
Thirded.
What has he done for Blackburn except get booked a lot?
Ziontrain said:Sorry, but defensively, he is. No point pretending otherwise. As far as I'm concerned he remains the weak link in that back four.
Its all fine and well going forward, but not so on his primary job - which is stopping the opposition - and not giving away cheap corners and free kicks, which he did an awful lot last season. Which BTW is where we got creamed by opponents.
You should expect more from a 27 year old full back.
asajoseph said:As for corners and free-kicks around the box, I'm not sure of the statistics - do we give away more than other teams? With regards to defending them however, you can't single out Lauren for last season's weakness. The whole back line was poor at dealing with set-pieces last year, Kolo, Cygan, Cole..
asajoseph said:Could we find a better RB than Lauren, in terms of what Arsenal require, if we were desparate? Probably. But I can't think of many that would be financially smart moves, considering the marginal return it would bring.
You don't get it, do you: we are not winning any more titles until the defense gets upgraded. If you call that a "marginal" return, then I'm not sure why we waste our time cheering? To come second?
A full back must defend first. If they are least legit on that it allows the others to go forward. You don't design a defense by prioritising offensive skills of the players - otherwise, hell why dont we play Quincy at full back - he'd be a hella lot better overlapper than Lauren!
We lost the title because we lack defensive fundamentals. Until that changes, you can forget about it. So enjoy Lauren as much as you like - we will not win any more titles with him in that position. Thats the reality of the premiership now.
asajoseph said:Last I checked, we went undefeated in the league with Lauren almost ever-present. What's changed since then?
"What's changed"? You mean other than his defense? The guy has stagnated - not only has he not developed, he has gone backward. That is just a pure no-no for a guy in his stage of his career. He should be peaking - not making mistakes that we would expect from Justin Hoyte
And in case you've been absent for the past two years, the league has just jumped up a few notches, since the "undefeated season". I wouldn't expect to win the Premiership unless our defense is even tighter than it was back then. The stakes have gone WAY up. That whole thing of spotting people two goal leads and then coming back to equalize aint gonna fly anymore.
That whole thing of spotting people two goal leads and then coming back to equalize aint gonna fly anymore.