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?