Good morning and welcome to a decidedly unwell Arseblog. I feel like a hobo that’s been forced to drink two litres of Blue Stratos just to get a kick.
We can start with some injury team news for tomorrow and while we might see Almunia back, playing through the pain apparently, and Song too, we’ve got nobody else returning and we’ve lost Abou Diaby with a medial knee ligament problem. If it wasn’t so completely unfunny it’d be funny. I’ve never known anything like the series of injuries this team has suffered this year and the club really have to get to the bottom of it and solve it as soon as possible. If that means he has to cut his losses with some players who can’t ever stay fit for more than a couple of games at a time then so be it.
Cesc has backed Lukasz Fabianski saying the Pole needs the support of his teammates, and that’s the way it should be. Amy Lawrence writes about the hapless keeper in the Guardian today and wonders if there’s something in the training regime, or something lacking in the training regime, that might explain the skittish, nervous nature of our goalkeepers. I’m told that in training Fabianski is the absolute model of the calm, assured goalkeeper, with outstanding reflexes and reaction times. It’s a different Fabianski who takes to the pitch for Arsenal which obviously calls into question his temperament.
There have been plenty of players in the past who are fine talents but unable to cope with the pressure or expectation once they pull on the shirt. Sadly it appears Fabianski is one of those. Amy’s point about the coaching is a good one though. Is it a coincidence that all our keeper seem to have the same faults? I vaguely remember Gerry Peyton from his playing days, I think I saw him once at Wembley as Kevin Keegan scored two goals against Ireland (might have been the other fella though), so I can’t say if he was similar. A decent shot-stopper but a poor communicator who was unable to dominate his area. It might explain a lot if he was.
It was interesting to hear Cesc talk about what we most need to improve on though. He said:
Sometimes we make mistakes that at the top level you pay for. It happened against Chelsea and Man United and now again [in Porto], so I think we have to try to find the solution to these problems because it is costing us many, many things. The other top teams don’t make these mistakes as often as we do.
And he’s right. I’ve looked at all the goals we’ve conceded this season and the number of individual errors or poor pieces of play are staggering. And when I talk about a poor piece of play I mean something that could have prevented the goals. Examples: Denilson v Stoke when he gave up chasing Sidibe, Denilson v United when he was unaware of Rooney, Traore v Stoke where he saw the attacker but for some reason gave up chasing him back, Mannone’s errors v West Ham and Birmingham, Almunia errors v Portsmouth, Man City and Liverpool, collectively the two goals against Everton, Diaby’s OG against United, Clichy’s hacked clearance which led to Bolton’s first, Clichy’s nightmare performance at Man City, and the list goes on and on.
Out of all the goals we’ve conceded this season, I reckon at least 25 of them are down to individual errors or passages of play that should have been relatively simple to prevent. I say simple in that they required a bit of hard work or awareness, or both, but nothing you wouldn’t expect from any professional football team, especially one with lofty ambitions like we have. There is a defensive malaise running through this team that is costing us dearly and will continue to hinder any chances we have of winning trophies until something is done about it. That is a huge percentage of the goals we have conceded and while we have to accept a certain amount of fallibility with our players, they’re human after all, it is too much.
It’s too easy to say sign new players (although I think a new goalkeeper would be a big help). While that might have some impact the bottom line is that collectively this team is not organised enough, not put through enough defensive drills, not aware of their own jobs on the pitch and when you add to that certain players who aren’t willing to put in the leg work which is so crucial then it’s no wonder we concede too many goals. There are decent individual players at Arsenal, certainly more than enough to put out a good team every week despite injuries. The problem, as far as I can see it, is that lack of cohesion and organisation. And maybe Amy’s point about the coaching of the goalkeeping goes for the outfield players too. Maybe that is what needs to change above all else because a new signing or two will only suffer the same way when those around them continue to make elementary mistakes.
Arsene is a man who loves stats, this one can’t surely have escaped him. Yet until he does something about it, until he addresses what is a very basic flaw in the set up of his team, I fear we’ll continue to lose and draw games that we shouldn’t.
Anyway, I’ll stick that list up in another blog when I’ve got it organised better. It’s a scabby old text document at the moment and I’m not feeling well enough to sort it today. Arsene’s press conference takes place this morning so when previewing the Sunderland game tomorrow we’ll have all the team news and the feedback from that.
Now, onto this week’s Arsecast. I’m joined by the Man from East Lower to talk about all the football stuff, naturally enough there’s chat about Fabianski and the never ending injuries, amongst other things. Sylvester’s in there, we go behind the scenes at the Arsenal School of Goalkeeping and more.
You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (20mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
Right, time for some dry toast or something. Till tomorrow.
