Arsenal Team rebuild is needed! by Goonerboy
And once again, we failed to win an away game and many are beginning to look in the direction of the young Mavropanos as the major cause of that as if we were winning before he came in, i suggest those doing so should look elsewhere because our “away day” struggles is obviously very deep.
Sometimes one needs to take it easy and not overreact in the heat and pressure filled moment of a game, to be sure, you have to watch again when you are calm and over your anger see what really happened.
For example, i was watching the first leg against Atletico and in the second half, i saw Welbeck dived twice of which the second led to their goal and i began to wonder why he had to fall over without being fouled, he basically gave the ball away, but after the match, Koscielny and Mustafi carried most of the blame (rightly so of course) but something happened before their horror defending; Welbeck.
Now, this is where I am really driving at, after seeing the Atletico game and our game at Leicester, we lacked real width and we have a very soft centre which shows a lot when we play away from home, and we wont be helping ourselves if these are not addressed.
When i see our team and see Xhaka paired with Wilshere and then Ozil, Mhkitaryan or Iwobi all in the same team, it is a recipe for disaster. Personally, I always feel the left footed players are too much which makes us so predictable and boring, but another thing is that we lose our width and most importantly our aggression in defending as there are too many midfielders in the team.
Xhaka has lost his aggressiveness because he wants to avoid being sent off, Wilshere is a playmaker that does not have the stature or the strength to be a tackler and then you move forward to Ozil, Ramsey and Iwobi – all of whom hates defending. These players crowd the centre and give us no width. Bellerin and Monreal become defenders and wingers at the same time while our midfield is high up the pitch, leaving the two CBs exposed.
This is what i see in our teams;
Ozil……Ozil…..
Ozil………Ozil……Aubameyang
………………Lacazette………….
Or you can replace Ozil with Wilshere or Xhaka. These players are almost the same in the way they play, only Ramsey, Elneny and to some extent Mhkitaryan have a different skill set.
This is what we should have;
…………….Fabinho………Xhaka/Ramsey
Mahrez……………Mhkitaryan…………Zaha……..
………………………..Aubameyang………….
With that, you have a balanced team, you can go for Fabinho….Ramsey if you want to go gung-ho. Mahrez hugs the wing and can score goals, Zaha is tricky, strong and has really developed. This is how the two most exciting teams this season are set up; City and Liverpool, Jesus and Aguero rotate as the CF while the wingers are Sane and Sterling – and same goes for Liverpool.
We have sooo many similar midfielders in our line up, it works at home probably because teams respect us but playing away where we have to be aggresive our midfielders are just too soft. So for me, we need to get rid of some of these midfielders, get at least one DMF and two natural wingers.
So we can have this squad;
………..Leno…………..
…..Bellerin…….Koulibally…….Mavropanos…..Kolasinac..
………………..Fabinho…….Ramsey………
Mahrez…………………Mhkitaryan………..Zaha………
………………………………..Aubameyang…………….
Subs; Cech, Holding, Chambers, Welbeck, Ozil,Lacazette, Meyer, Elneny, Koscielny
What do you think?
Goonerboy