Arsenal Banter Archive February 13 2019

 

Use our rumours form to send us arsenal transfer rumours.

13 Feb 2019 14:34:04
Started thinking the other day about how we miss having fullbacks the quality of Dixon and Winterburn in our side. Their type would surely help our current defence. That got me thinking more though, and the way we play these days, and in fact the way football has gone, with the use of wingbacks, would they, as "traditional" style fullbacks putting defence first, even play for us now, and even if they did, with the massively increased work load shoved onto the "wingback", would their careers have lasted anything like as long as it did, or would they have been burnt out much sooner? I think all our expectations of the full back has changed. A mate of mine used to hate Sagna, purely because "he could never beat the full back" on attack! I used to have to remind him that Sagna was our right back and screaming past the oppo full back wasn't really his primary role, and if that's want he wants from a full back we might as well play Walcott in that position (which actually got me thinking maybe Walcott could have played as wing back!, like Ashley Young does for Man Utd? ) . However, i actually think that Dixon and Winterburn were also extremely effective in attack, perhaps even more so than the likes of the modern wing back like Bellerin. So they might not of scored as many goals as the modern wingbacks (still remember the Winterburn thunderbolt versus Chelsea though) but for me the difference is they were much better at supporting an existing winger, rather than being the winger themselves. In a less is more type role, and just as the likes of Frank Lampard was so successful in timing his run into the box, so were Dixon and Winterburn at choosing the right time to go forward and overlap the winger and create chances. Maybe we again need some players who put their primary defensive role first, with any other skills elsewhere on the pitch just an added bonus?

Believable2 Unbelievable0

13 Feb 2019 15:17:20
I agree Epping fullbacks are primarily defenders who help our with attack not the other way round.
Personally my Ideal would be 5 at the back but fullbacks who supplement the attack and the central CB being very comfortable on the ball with decent pace enabling him to play both sweeper when opponents have the ball and DM when we attack freeing up our central midfielders to join the attack in a
5 2 1 2 formation.
You would need to bring in or develope the right personel but it's very effective system if done right.
Maybe Chambers could be our DM/ Sweeper because although I haven't really seen much of him at Fulham I'm reading good stuff about him, also I've always thought David Luis would be an ideal Sweeper/ DM mix in that system too.

Agree0 Disagree0

14 Feb 2019 04:05:32
Sagna was incredibly underrated. Interesting stat, we played aerial goal kicks to Sagna more than any other player before Giroud arrived.

Worth mentioning here that Wenger often played with a rotating defence rather than an interlocking one. What I mean by this is that he often favoured one attacking FB and a defensive one. For example when Cole/ Clichy would move up the pitch, the left CB would move across to cover, the right CB would follow, and Sagna would stay back and tuck inside. He reversed this when Bellerin broke through and Monreal became our defensive fullback.

For a while we played a more interlocking style with both fullbacks Monreal and Bellerin playing more attacking, and then Coquelin would drop back almost to CB positions, allowing the CBs to cover the space vacated by Bellerin/ Monreal's attacks. We then became incredibly poor at defending when we kept attacking like usual and played Xhaka in Coquelin's position leading to constantly seeing Koscielny exposed alone at the back.

The reason Bellerin's been much more defensive the past couple seasons is because we've been playing Kolasinac who plays almost as a winger and Xhaka isn't able to drop back like a DM. Unfortunately defending isn't the biggest part of Bellerin's game, probably still has nightmares of getting skinned by Douglas Costa, but he's improving.

Agree0 Disagree0

Review Of The Day 13th February 2019

13 Feb 2019 07:29:01
{Ed's Note - Ed001 has posted a new article entitled, Review Of The Day 13th February 2019

Believable0 Unbelievable0