Arsenal are all cock and no balls

Chelsea v Arsenal was like watching a boxing contest where the challenger prances around with deft footwork and clever jabs but has no killer punch and all it takes to end the fight is for the champion to sling a knockout blow. Arsenal probed well at Stamford Bridge and were more dangerous than on last season’s visit, but we failed to step up the tempo. Chelsea just picked us off when they felt like it. Arsenal floated like a butterfly, Chelsea stung like a bee.

As I’ve said a trillions times, Arsenal can beat any club home and away domestically other than Chelsea and Manchester United. Against either of those clubs, Arsenal are all mouth and no trousers. We look good but produce very little. Faced with Chelsea and United, with their tactics and their clinical ruthless attitude, Arsenal are all cock and no balls. We have lots of great possession but play sideways when met with a deep backline. Against Chelsea and United, Arsenal are football eunuchs.

We lost to Didier Drogba at Chelsea last season and every man, his dog, both cats and several goldfish knew that Arsenal at least needed stronger defenders in order to handle him this season. One season later and nothing is different. We signed Laurent Koscielny and Sebastien Squillaci, but Koscielny is currently far too slight to make a physical impact and Squillaci looked very at sea. That is not progress.

That is also not primarily their problem. We have no defensive organisation and that can only be down to the boss. Buying great defenders, big strong lumps, won’t solve our Drogba dilemma – knowing what we are doing and why will make that impact. You could sign top-drawer international defenders but if we place them into a backline that has no defensive organisation they too would look shambolic.

This is not going to change fast, not at the very earliest until the next transfer window, when we could feasibly sign better defenders, or until Wenger allows the defence to be run properly. The full-backs can’t defend, the centre-backs try to and the rest of the team just guesses how to protect the back four.

When we shift to fast-passing forward mode we kill teams, but we only do this sporadically and that is such a frustration. No team can live with that. There appears to be no rhyme or reason for when we start this method, against which teams and when we ignore it , in favour of incessant sideways passing.

Perhaps we can rekindle our fast-passing forward mode when Theo Walcott returns and get back to ripping teams open with attacking speed. Perhaps we lack the confidence to do it against Chelsea and United. Until anything changes, on defensive organisation and attacking tempo, we’ll beat the teams we can handle beating but not the biggest two that matter.

Source: Simon Rose, The Online Gooner on 4 Oct 10