Our defending under emery

[theHotHead]

Whilst I am firmly not getting on Emery's back at all I do have to question some of his decisions like lineups and tactics. I do not understand how gung ho football can be successful unless you are filled with a dream team of players - which clearly we are not.

The first thing I expected Emery to do is make us difficult to beat/break down, we are just as easy as before and that for me ia the biggest disappointment. We have international footballers and pro ballers that have played for big clubs, so its not like we are talking about a bunch of pubbers. Emwry should be able to make us defensively solid and it should be apparent from our first game but its not.

Like Wenger said, its easy to destroy and more difficult to create. The foundation of ALL good teams is a solid defence, you build from that. Emery deserves the criticism he is getting for us being so defensively shit still.

Overcommitting when we go forward is ridiculous when you can see the holes behind us and the poor standard of defending on display. By the turn of the year if we are having this same discussion I will not be happy, even though I think he will need a season or 2 to imprint his will.

[LegendaryKeown]

I won't comment on his system, but we were naive again with over-committing of players on a corner after going 2-1 up yesterday, and were lucky that Perez is not good enough to punish us. It was nice to see Emery get annoyed by this, so it's obvious he's not Wenger, but it shows how much this is a work in progress.

Emery does not want Ramsey to play as second striker. He'll get Torreira in to sit, leaving us with 3 back to deal with counter attacks. Bellerin and Monreal have to go forward in this system, we need fullbacks to push forward. The issue is that our midfielders don't work hard enough. People talk about Ozil but how much do Ramsey and Xhaka track back either?

[gooney]

Having torreira sit make no difference if your fullback are that high up. We will still be too open. Everyone will have as bad if shooting day as west ham did yesterday. His tactics are beyond silly

[theHotHead]

It does make a difference because teams hardly leave 2 players up top for counter attacks, that means Arsenal could have 2x CBs and 2x holding CMs looking after one attacker - plenty to cover a counter attack.

One of the CMs goes to the counter attacker on the ball and the over covers the space the counter attack will look to exploit. Don't see why that should be so difficult to do.

[Arsenalthebest]

From what I saw against West Ham, quite often Arsenal got court on the counter with only our centre backs covering, If Bellerin bombs forward Monreal should stay back and cover and vice versa. It doesn't seem like anyone is doing that, instead everyone is pressing far up the pitch and leaving our central defenders a lot of work to do.

[PairyGrows]

To me, the defensive issues are symptomatic of a whole host of issues, and as such they require lots of time and effort both on and off the pitch. Frankly, I'd not be surprised if we see little improvement in our defence as the season goes on. I'll explain why shortly.

The root cause of most of our tactical problems is that our squad is simply not very well-equipped to execute Emery's system. We have an excessive number of highly-paid attacking midfielders (Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Ramsey) and strikers (Aubameyang, Lacazette) in our ranks while having just one recognised winger, Iwobi, who, arguably, may not even be best-suited to play as a winger. We're then forced to try and fit these players into the starting eleven, which comes at a big cost.

What cost is that? Well, it’s very simple. We need our wide players to provide width, but unfortunately both Iwobi and especially Mkhitaryan tend to drift in, forcing the full-backs to push further up the pitch to give us the width we need. The problem is that Iwobi and especially Mkhitaryan rarely cover the space behind the full-backs, leaving us quite exposed in the wide areas. The centre-backs will then have to drift out wide to plug these gaps, stretching the gap between them. This gap should, in turn, be plugged by a central midfielder, but unfortunately Xhaka, Ramsey and Guendouzi are not very defence-oriented. Thus, we've been stretched out of shape and put on the back foot.

The problems are exacerbated when pressing, an essential component of Emery’s system, comes into play. For pressing to work, playing a high defensive line is crucial; we must close the opponent down, which means there can’t be a huge chunk of space between the defenders and the midfielders. Yet the high line coupled with exposed flanks gives the opponent an easy way to exploit the gaping holes in our defence. Add into the mix the fact that neither Mustafi nor Sokratis are at their best running toward the goal, and you have a recipe for a disaster in your hands.

All in all, I see our defensive issues stemming from much deeper systemic problems, rectifying of which will be time-consuming. What can we do about it? I might go into it later but not now. This post is long enough as it is.

[Santi]

Sort the midfield out and it'll look much better. Probel misn't just Bellerin and Monreal going forward, but when they do...nobody is sitting in front of the CB's.

Drop Xhaka and teach Bellerin some positional sense (or play Licht) and we will look instantly better.

[Zedie]

Sort the midfield out and it'll look much better. Probel misn't just Bellerin and Monreal going forward, but when they do...nobody is sitting in front of the CB's.

Drop Xhaka and teach Bellerin some positional sense (or play Licht) and we will look instantly better.

Partially agree with this. Xhakas lack of mobility is causing huge problems, however bellerins issue is more whoever plays infront of him doesn't have the legs or cuts inside, so he has to go byline to byline for 90 mins to create the pace.

If we get someone who sits back further, we struggle more to get in behind defenses on counters.

We badly need a right wing forward.

[greengoonerie]

TBH, we've a terrible keeper.

It doesn't help that we have very poor players in front of him either, but Cech will cost us goals.

I'd argue there are 10-11 better keepers in the Prem atm than Cech. That's not good enough tbh.