Arsenal somehow managed to take all three points in the big Premier League game against Leicester City on Sunday despite Arsene Wenger having to cope without the two centre backs that he wanted to start against the Foxes. We still do not know the extent of the injury picked up by Gabriel in training but hopefully it will not prove serious.
We do at least know the reason why Laurent Koscielny was forced off at haltime of the win over Leicester and thankfully it was only a dead leg. That should mean that the French international is available again for the FA cup at the weekend.
Just as well for Arsenal really, because we also have massive games against Barcelona and Man United coming up and we certainly do not want to go into them without our best defender. And as well as being the best defender in the Arsenal squad, Koscielny is now being regularly talked about as the best in the country.
Before our last game it was the Leicester star striker Jamie Vardy that said our centre back was the toughest player he has faced, and now it is another of the division’s top marksmen, Odion Ighalo of Watford, who has been fulsome in his praise of Kos the boss, according to an Evening Standard report.
He said, “I think I’ve faced a lot of tough defenders this season.
“But I would say that against Arsenal Koscielny didn’t give me enough space to do what I want to do and that game was really difficult.”
Some of Koscielny’s stats are not so good, though, like the number of tackles he has made being only the 141st best in the EPL table. However, his all round game is right up there as you can see from a Squawka.com stats comparison between him and three best defenders from the other clubs in the top four.
Because the Man City captain Kompany has only played 10 games I adjusted the stats to show the figures per 90 minutes and as well as easily beating Kompany, Wes Morgan and Alderweireld with his defensive score, Koscielny’s total score of 38.44 is way better than the 29.77, 29.44 and 16.79 of the other three.
So have Arsenal got the best defender in the country?