Sol Campbell has claimed that Arsenal must sign two top defenders to challenge the top teams in the Premier League. The Gunners have fallen outside the top four thanks to their defeat to Manchester United at the weekend, and look to be well out of the race for the Premier League title. Manchester City are runaway leaders with the chasing pack eight-plus points behind them at this early point in the campaign.
Their loss to United came with the Gunners having dominated plenty of the match, but thanks to the two early mistakes which saw them 2-0 down inside 11 minutes, the result got away from them.
Former defender Campbell insists that the club has done well however, and insists that the outing against their rivals is a good base to build on.
“They’ve done pretty well overall,” Campbell added.
“If they can build on that performance against Manchester United – but cut out the first 10 minutes – they’ll be OK.
“But Arsenal are two defenders short of being a top team.
“They really need to push the boat out and buy a couple more players.”
Our attack is thoroughly exciting with the likes of Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Ozil and Alexandre Lacazette, while Olivier Giroud, Alex Iwobi, Danny Welbeck and many others can also cause serious trouble to rival defences.
Our defence does have frailties, and you could argue that if we were stronger at the back we could free up another player for our midfield or attack, and that could potentially open us up to win many more matches.
If we signed two top defenders could we sacrifice a defender and adopt a more attacking system? Are we only two defenders short of our biggest rivals?
Pat J
nope our manager and how he structured the club has hampered our progression for more than a decade
hopefully with mislintat an sanllehi brought in ivan is preparing for wengers departure
ask yourself…
from 2005 to 2017 what is the thing that has been constant.
that is the reason why we cant win the epl
ARSENE WENGER.
mancity game we said it was the referee,man utd game we said it was degea,lets wait for the next big game and see what reason we can conjure…
look whos coming to europa league:
leipzig
napoli
dortmund
athletico madrid
hahaha, game friggin over
Agree with Sol but to b honest that has been our problem for the last ten years.
Our immediate needs right now are
– a proper DM to shield the back players when they misbehave as they did on Saturday
– a RWB to give cover and competition to Belerin. Sometimes I shudder to think what would happen to our back-three formation should the man sustain an injury. Nelson is still way away from making the grade imo
It’s an old saying but you win nothing without a decent defence.
As to getting other players in well that would help but unless somebody is going to drill the defence to get them working as a unit with errors cut to a minimum it’s that saying about polishing a t…………
We could also do with some players who are leaders who the others follow.
It must be asked again; what role does Steve Bould play in coaching Arsenal’s defence to earn his salary?
Not necessarily the personel coz we have great defenders-certainly better than liverfool who have matip,klavan,lovren who are far inferior than koscielny,mustafi,monreal. But the thing we lack is a leader who can organise his defence as when we show a poor defensive display,our back 5 looks like 5 individual defenders all over the place rather than a compact and disciplined back 5. We need a real leader as a CB as I said earlier in one article…
No, the problem is our manager. For years he hasn’t been able to create an organized defensive midfield, resulting in our defense being under too much pressure. Eventually, this has made as good as all our defenders over the last 10-12 years look bad and people talking about buying new ones. You can actually say the same about our goalkeepers for the last 10-12 years. No matter who we buy, it will not really help us unless we are organized better, when the opponents have the ball.
To me it more a problem of bad defending than bad defenders. We don’t understand how to defend as a team. We sometimes have multiple players converging on the ball leaving opponents wide open.
There was enough time after Kos’s error for his teammates to stop the goal either by proper positioning or proper tackling or goalkeeping.
We have players drift forward at the wrong moments and not tracking back, we sometimes have one or two players pressing high and the rest watching. Your get put the two best CD in the world at the back of Arsenal but they would still get overrun as a result of our team play and positioning.
To me, it looks like our players could use a coach or manager who brings them all on the same page with respect to positioning when we are in possession and positioning when we don’t have the ball.
Pep brought some of that basic team defending discipline to Man City and they conceded basically half the goals we did (19 vs 10) and only 1 more than league-best Man U (9).
If you learn how to defend as a team you can take a lot of pressure of you back 3 or 4, if you don’t even the best back 3 or 4 will get overrun by a skillful set of forwards.
Arsenal no longer have any top quality centre backs on their books.Holding and Beliek are promising youngsters but the rest are no longer international class. In view of their erratic form I very much doubt if Mustafi or Kocielney will be first eleven picks for Germany and France and in the case of the former I very much doubt if he will make the German squad. The need for 2 quality centre backs is essential if AFC are to regain their position in the top four in the Premier League.The likes of Manolas, Giminez or Koulibaly would be excellent acquisitions for Arsenal whose recruitment team has proved to be incompetent in their failure to identify and secure for example Joe Gomez and Harry Maguire who were both available 2/3 years ago.