Ever since we bounced back from a shaky first half of the season, Arsenal have been doing most things pretty well. With the best Premier League form of 2015, the Gunners have also been creating and scoring goals for fun while being as mean as a miser at the other end.
While it is clearly the defensive side of things that matters most to our France international centre back, Laurent Koscielny has been lavishing praise on the way the whole team has been working to deny our opponents and he feels that a lot of the work is done with the way we have been starting games.
It is pretty amazing to consider that Arsenal have not conceded a single first half goal in the last 14 Premier League games and only six from our last 11 complete games, so it is clear that teams are finding it a real problem to cope with our fast starts.
Koscielny told Arsenal Player, “It is not just the work of the back four because our quality is to have the ball, to stay high and when we lose the ball to transition from offence to defence.
“We have done well for two or three months and it is important to keep this. When you watch our game you see that when we win the ball back we are [often] directly in the opponents’ half and we have the players who can make the difference going forward.
“We are better when we start the game well. When you are ready for the kick-off and are on the front foot, you feel better and better in the game.
“We have scored a lot of goals in the first 10 to 15 minutes of games and it is important to keep this going because the team are ready together to go forward together.
“We have scored a lot of goals in the first half and have not conceded goals and it is because we are ready and we go high to press our opponents and quickly win the ball.”
It is the perfect recipe for a game to be honest; scoring early and keeping the ball to leave your opponents chasing the game and using all their energy. But can we do the same thing tonight against a Swansea City side that are pretty handy with the ball themselves?
How much do you guys think we can sell Koscielny for? He is very good and can fetch some good bucks from the likes of real madrid and barcelona before he expires…40M pounds? is that low or high? ad be okay with that
Y do you want to sell.. He is our backbone.At any cost we have to keep him. He adds more value than Walcott. I dont want Walcott to go also but we can easily replace walcott not Kos.
yeah.. I hope we sell Giroud, Coquelin, Ozil, Cazorla, Monreal and Sanchez as well!!
go back to fifa career mode
I like the way you think! Sellers are Winners!
We don’t need the money and we will never sell the boss
Dont take it for granted. They have good players too. I always admire Swansea than any other mid-table team. We have to especially take care of Montero and shelvey.
Hope Wenger plays Walcott instead of Ramsey today. He needs confidence and we need him next season. Even if we replace him next season, remember everyone isnt like Alexis!!
Walcott will play regularly in pre-season, this match is very important for us to bench ramsey.
He knows how to score more than walcott.
Yeah lets give ABOU a good birthday.
OT: Wenger on Chambers and our future on CB’s.
“When players come out of it, they are stronger. I believe that Calum Chambers will be a centre back, more than a right back and I want to develop him more as a centre back – even a central midfielder.
“He has good stature. He is intelligent and reads the game well, the fact that he’s more at ease in the middle.
“On the flank, today you need more pace, more change of direction, more agility and he has the stamina, the power and the quality to be a central midfielder or a central defender.
“That means we have enough there, Debuchy can play there, Monreal can play there so you can say we are not out to buy a central defender. And Gabriel will be a great central defender, believe me. So we have now sorted out the centre backs.”
…And don’t forget Hayden
Yeah agreed, thats why i thought Keown on the money when saying GK Striker and DM.
If Cazorla is guaranteed next season to have same form as this one then all we need is GK and ST only. Give Coq his deserved place along Cazorla and we should be more than alright.
Thanks for that Darwin. I think that is Wenger confirming what most of us who have spent more than a minute thinking about it have come to realise – Wenger has spent £27M on our future CBs already, so all this Hummels, Schar chat is null and void.
And I am excited to hear him say “Gabriel will be a great central defender, believe me”. Been really disappointed in the media to hear him being effectively written off as not the solution. How the hell can anyone come to that conclusion after an impressive stint at Villareal and half a dozen cameos with us? To think there were some on here talking about Vlar,Reid etc. Anyone who says the following has my immediate respect:
“I am arriving at a big club like this and the fans can expect to find a Gabriel with a great will to help everyone. Not just thinking of me as an individual, because to me that is not important. I care more about helping the team and my team-mates also think that. I want to help everyone, so the fans can expect a Gabriel that on the field has a lot of will to be able to help the team win important things.”
No problem man. Hope CB speculations stop now atleast. and as you mentioned, I really liked how Gabriel introduced himself. I see a guy committed to a team rather than personal glory. I admire and like those kind of people in sports in general.
j1.. I can only presume it must be Captain type figure. We can safely say Gab isnt going to captain Arsenal anytime soon. I must agree with them a little, i believe we are defensively strong even though we could strive to be stronger but on the captain front we are no closer having than when PV moved on. Captain does not have to be a CB but it is a preferred area.
Wether late or early, lets jst get those three points in the bag. COYG
I prefer early
we need to be on our toes. but i’m confident bellerin can handle montero, unlike chambers (pacebattle) and we don’t have monreal playing as a cb. also we have the coq integrated into the team. we will be too strong i think, but of course it’ll be tough. just remember we didn’t have a
defense last time we met.
It will basically be a different team we field tonight – only 5 of the reverse fixture likely to start and possibly only 2 of those 5 playing in the same position as they did that day. In comes Ospina, Bellerin, Kos, Coq, Ozil and Giroud – not bad back-up.
leroy fer in to be le coqs backup?