Arsenal vs Stoke: Arsene Wenger has to get back to basics for Premier League match
Arsenal manager bemoans dearth of ‘true defenders’ in modern game
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Your support makes all the difference.Ahead of a match against opposition against whom Arsenal struggle away from home, Arsène Wenger made a surprising admission. His team don’t do any extra training on set-pieces before Stoke City visit.
“At home, not so much, because we feel that the best is to play in their half,” the Arsenal manager said. “Of course we work always on it, but more when you play away.”
His words almost sum up what has been a set problem at Arsenal for close to a decade, especially in big games. Wenger often shows undue faith in what his attack can do to other teams, and doesn’t worry enough about what the opposition can do to them.
The root of that problem is more relevant than ever: the entire defensive approach of Arsenal’s game is not good enough. This season has threatened to bring it to new lows.
Wenger’s side have conceded 25 goals in 20 League matches, and that rate of 1.25 a game is the second worst in his 18 years at the club, ranking behind only the defensive disaster of 2011-12. At least Wenger acknowledges the issue, and is in the market for a defender.
“We have a few names,” Wenger said. “We need, number-wise, one more player.”
The question is whether one will be enough to cover the multitude of problems Arsenal have endured at the back, not least the amount of injuries. It all came to head in their last game against Stoke City, the 3-2 defeat at the Britannia in December. A makeshift Arsenal defence were pulled apart by football and pushed around physically, while making all manner of errors.
Per Mertesacker showed a woeful lack of leadership in getting beaten to a 50-50 ball by little Bojan Krkic, before Wenger’s side – of course – conceded from a set-piece. It would seem they need more than one signing to help rectify all that.
Wenger is now more relaxed, because Laurent Koscielny and Mathieu Debuchy are returning from injury, but he also offered another explanation for only wanting one signing: there are not many true defenders available.
“The game has become more technical,” Wenger argued. “In the football education system, you cultivate less that intense desire. It’s more about the quality of the technique, and maybe that creates less defenders.
“I believe as well that the young boys practise well on quality pitches, whereas before it was muddy and you could tackle and throw your body in – it created opportunities for defenders to work naturally on their defensive techniques. Today, it’s all more standing up, and there is less physical commitment because the quality of the pitches is much better.”
Strikingly, given the historical antipathy between the two teams and their managers, Wenger enthused about two Chelsea players as rare modern examples of the old-style defensive leaders.
“John Terry is a coach on the pitch. He’s a Tony Adams, basically organises the team, because he has a huge experience now and because he reads the game well.
“Maybe [Gary] Cahill in five, six, seven years will be like that as well. He is the right age, and you do not find many any more. You had more before than you do today.”
Wenger could have signed Cahill himself, and one implication of his remarks is Arsenal now lack an imposing leader. It makes Stoke’s visit timely, given that they seem to be awash with such defenders, and represent almost the last bastion of a vintage British back-line.
Wenger had one of the most famous of those, Adams, in his early years at Arsenal, of course, and offered a lament for those days: “When I arrived here, the back four was all English, but they were not only English. They communicated because they had the same culture, the same way to see the game, they were educated together.
“Communication is an important part. With people coming in from different countries, communication has gone from the back four, and you see less people who talk. It doesn’t mean there are no leaders, but they do not speak always the same language. That has a little bit gone from our game.”
Wenger also points to the intensely physical back-line that underscored the Invincibles in 2003-04, but the key question is what he can do to get back to anything like that position again, beyond signing another defender.
“We are getting there,” Wenger said, before offering a typical and all-too relevant caveat. “It’s not only that. I think we have more offensive players in midfield than we had at the time, you know. It’s not only the back four. I think the whole defensive unit, we are more offensively oriented than we were at that time.”
It has become a frequent refrain. It remains to be seen whether acknowledging it is enough to fix an increasingly frequent problem.
Probable teams: Arsenal: (4-1-4-1) Szczesny; Debuchy, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Gibbs; Flamini; Oxlade-Chamberlain, Cazorla, Ramsey, Sanchez; Giroud.
Stoke: (4-4-1-1) Begovic; Bardsley, Shawcross, Muniesa, Pieters; Walters, Whelan, N’Zonzi, Arnautovic; Bojan; Crouch.
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