PL: Arsenal vs Southampton | 30/10/04

[KingReyes]

Regarding the match we didn't play with confidence for most of the match, the loss against Man U still in effect. Still I felt we did enough to win the match but sometimes these kind of things happen.

My main concern is that we are condeding a fair amount of goals on set pieces, Ljungberg mentioned this in the 2-2 draw against Pana and its really becoming a concern.

Regarging player performance once again Edu shows his lack of consistency, after a good match against the Mancs once again his standards were poor and he was upstaged by a 17 year old who replaced him. Also credit to RVP for showing determination, that goal will give plenty of confidence.

 

[Anonymous]

Awwww, I'll post you your rattle in the morning.

Hehe.

 

[weelip]

Back to the Topic,

From last night's game, i thought there are a few things that need to address.

1. Jens Lehmann is only an average Keeper that is prone to making erratic decisions. (although the none of the 2 goals scored were his fault)

2. Cygan Jumps like dwarf and is physically weak. He simply cannot make it at EPL...especially against teams that like to pump the ball into the box for headers. With his age at the wrong side of 30, i think he will never make it. I would have hope Senderos gets a chance soon. The lad seems big and strong and might be a suitable replacement for Campbell when he is injured/suspended. Boy we really missed Campbell's stature and presence today.

3. Initially i was quite defensive about Lauren. But now i agree with some of you here....we NEED a better Right Back. He does not seems to be in the same frequency with the arsenal's forwards today and hoofs the ball upfield a bit too much for my liking.

4. Lyungberg simply cannot cut it as a winger. He only has pace. On a day we need some fresh impetus, he is found wanting in technicality and guile.Somehow, i would have hoped Pennant is sub in instead of Pires. He should have been employed somewhere probably in midfield to run in from deep.

On the plus side, i thought Edu, Van Persie, cole, reyes(first half) all did well. Henry also had a decent game too.

 

[skart14]

Why did wenger carry it on day after day, Sir alex wanted to keep it in House, but Oh no, the French love trying to get one over on the English, guess what, we have a canny scott in charge, I really hope Mr wenger is not on that Video.

Hell your are still here, i thought you would have ****ed off after your lost to mighty pompey....

 

[Mbaki Mutahaba]

We are very poor in defending set pieces. Its to the point anytime there is a corner/free kick against us..i switch the channel...cos I expect the worst. what gets me is we really don't try to mark up..i mean the first goal..SMpton had like 3 open players running in. And most of our guys usually just jump without even making an honest attempt to head the ball out. We just stick our body to throw the guy off balance..but besides SOL. Vieira was especially guilty today..

 

[beanz]

Some of these forensic dissections of every players performance, is missing the point that players ar'nt robots that do the same thing day in and day out.
Of course they would have been affected by last weeks game and it showed a bit yesterday, but I thought overall we were'nt too bad and to give Soton their due, they defended well aided by a bit of luck, which we've had our fair share of in the last year or so.
I was really pissed when their second goal went in and enormously relieved when RVP equalised, it's a funny old game football. :mrgreen:

 

[brady]

We are very poor in defending set pieces. Its to the point anytime there is a corner/free kick against us..i switch the channel...cos I expect the worst. what gets me is we really don't try to mark up..i mean the first goal..SMpton had like 3 open players running in. And most of our guys usually just jump without even making an honest attempt to head the ball out. We just stick our body to throw the guy off balance..but besides SOL. Vieira was especially guilty today..

too right. i just had a bad feeling about the game. the saints scored against us at highbury in a similar fashion one or two seasons ago, and nicked a point too if i recall correctly.

we don't do enough of the jostling that other teams, especially the italians, have got down to a fine art. it is not illegal, otherwise everyone would have stopped it. what it means is that instead of ball watching and hoping that you are in the right place, you focus on the player and get in his face and put him off. better yet get in front of him so he does not have a free run at the ball. from the evidence last night, all of them were ball watching.

i don't know who is at fault, certainly vieira was quite culpable for one of them but someone must be in charge of organising the defence. did not seem to be happening. the captain must do it if no one is up to it. that's what he's there for. we need to eradicate such mistakes if we are serious about the CHampions League.

 

[Asterix]

I haven't read all 32 pages of this thread - mea culpa - but it seemed the place to point out that Man City has a better defensive record than Arsenal at the moment. So too does a certain team just across town. This could hurt us in a few months time. Wenger has said he is concerned, and rightly so. But I have faith it will be addressed.

 

[Florida Gooner]

I haven't read all 32 pages of this thread - mea culpa - but it seemed the place to point out that Man City has a better defensive record than Arsenal at the moment. So too does a certain team just across town. This could hurt us in a few months time. Wenger has said he is concerned, and rightly so. But I have faith it will be addressed.

For the record, the following sides have less GA (12) than Arsenal:

Russian Mafia 3
Everton 10
Liverpool 10 (1 less game played)
Satan's Offspring 9
Spuds 8
Man City 11
Birmingham 10

 

[Asterix]

You're absolutely right - I wanted to make the point in particular that a team with a joke for a defence has a better record than us at present. And we've really only had one or two difficult games so far - haven't come up against Liverpool, newcastle, Chelsea or the dercy games yet.

 

[USArsenal]

folks, you are blowing this out of proportion.... yes, we've conceded more goals that those teams, but we have scored 31.... you win matches by outscoring the other team....

chelsea have scored half as many as us (16)
everton have scored less than half (14)
'pool have scored 13 less goals ( 18 )
manure have scored approx 1/3 (11)
spuds? LOL come on... they have only scored 6.....
mancity have scored less than half (12)
brum? another LOL.. they have scored 7...

all we have to do is keep outscoring our opponents and we will keep winning...

sure, i ouwld like a few more clean sheets, but some are going off the deep end...

 

[Asterix]

Point taken, and our attack is awesome, but still most Championship winning teams have been in the top two or three for defence as well. I'm just saying we need to pull our socks up a bit. It has cost us points against Southampton, panathinaikos, Rosenborg and Bolton. Yes we can still outscore teams on most days, but on the days when we hit the post 19 times we need the defence to be rock solid.

I see Chelski as our main threat, and their attack, albeit against weaker teams, is starting to fire up. I think this is going to be a very interesting season!

 

[jeromelee]

folks, you are blowing this out of proportion.... yes, we've conceded more goals that those teams, but we have scored 31.... you win matches by outscoring the other team....

chelsea have scored half as many as us (16)
everton have scored less than half (14)
'pool have scored 13 less goals ( 18 )
manure have scored approx 1/3 (11)
spuds? LOL come on... they have only scored 6.....
mancity have scored less than half (12)
brum? another LOL.. they have scored 7...

all we have to do is keep outscoring our opponents and we will keep winning...

sure, i ouwld like a few more clean sheets, but some are going off the deep end...

That's a good point but you to understand that we can't be letting in all this soft goals. As much as we've scored more than Chelsea for example, they are still level with us on points.

We play really entertaining football, like Real in it's heyday, but cannot keep conceding all this soft goals. First of all, it slowly diminishes the players confidence in defense which will mentally affect their game.

Secondly, this will lead to more incidence where our attacking players end up arguing with our defensive players. Which doesnt' help morale.

And thirdly, we cannot always hope to outscore the opposition. We've seen over and over again where Arsenal could've won a game by a comfortable scoreline of 8-3 or something but we only won it 3-1 or maybe 1-0. We miss a lot of chances. It won't come as a surprise when there are games where we can't put away a single chance, and all it takes is the opponent to nick one against us.

I know Wenger too believes we have a problem in defense and that's why he's been trying to focus his attention on beefing up in that department. But we may be looking at this wrong. We're looking at players in defense that are good moving forward to support the attack, but is that what we need? I think we may actually need a player who knows how to defend well. Someone strong in the air and has the pace to chase players down. With Cole and Lauren often overlapping to support the attack it has often left Sol and Kolo under pressure. Cygan was brought in to fill those shoes, but obviously has not lived up to expectations.

 

[Mbaki Mutahaba]

You can't have both. Yes we do need to improve on our defense..especially in regards to set pieces. But we have to accept the simple fact..and that is..if we want to be all free scoring team..then our defensive records will usually be compromised. Lets look at last year. We weren't scoring at will..we won quite a lot of games 1-0..I don't have a problem with that. But for those braggin about this year's attacking style which reminds me of 2002/2003 please dont' set unrealistic defensive goals.

Once again before being bombarded. I am not suggesting the current defense does not need improvement. It needs big time..ON SET PIECES.

 

[Soler]

folks, you are blowing this out of proportion.... yes, we've conceded more goals that those teams, but we have scored 31.... you win matches by outscoring the other team....

chelsea have scored half as many as us (16)
everton have scored less than half (14)
'pool have scored 13 less goals ( 18 )
manure have scored approx 1/3 (11)
spuds? LOL come on... they have only scored 6.....
mancity have scored less than half (12)
brum? another LOL.. they have scored 7...

all we have to do is keep outscoring our opponents and we will keep winning...

sure, i ouwld like a few more clean sheets, but some are going off the deep end...

That's the same mentality Real Madrid had last season and that backfired on them big time. If you can't keep the goals out what are you to do when you can't score one yourself? You're stuffed, just like Real Madrid found out.

 

[KingReyes]

I feel that the key to sucess is a good defense, don't get me wrong I love our style of attacking football but sometimes you can't win 4-0 and a 1-0 or 2-1 win is good enough. Saturday was one of those days, our attack was off and we needed that extra defensive stability instead, however we seem to lack concentration when it comes to defending as a team. I don't think its a Cygan or Lauren issue but defending as a team mainly on set pieces.

 

[Soler]

I don't think its a Cygan or Lauren issue but defending as a team mainly on set pieces.

Just like when it comes to attacking set pieces, we are, quite frankly, **** at them. It's like we never practice them at all ...

 

[Taozhe]

Set Pieces is one of the areas we are not strong in. Henry used to take a mean freekick. what happened now?

 

[Feis-al]

My main worry is the following;

1- In Europe, we have quit tall physical guys for set-pieces, That worries me alittle when we need to defend a lead.

2- Chelsea; the Russians have mastered the art of scoring from set-pieces themselves and are more than capable of doing just that.

I'm really crying hard to have one youth come up and do better than Cygan or atleast Le Boss gets one

 

[Soler]

Set Pieces is one of the areas we are not strong in. Henry used to take a mean freekick. what happened now?

I'd like to know why the hell our corners are so bad. It's almost like whenever we get it's more dangerous to us than it is to the opposition!