Arsenal have got to start turning our dominance into the wins that our play deserves. Too many draws have seen us slip to six points behind the Premier League leaders Chelsea, although the Gunners do have a chance to cut that lead when we travel to Stamford Bridge on Sunday.
Arsenal have been playing pretty well, to be fair, and were the better side against the Spuds again, but one stat has made Arsene Wenger pinpoint one particular area in which we could do better and that is the set pieces. The Gunners took an astonishing FIFTEEN corners in the north London derby – but not only did we fail to score from them, only one of them created a chance.
And it gets worse, Gooners, if you consider that we have not scored from a corner all season, despite having nine against Crystal Palace, ten against Leicester, three at Everton and five against both Man City and Southampton. So it is hardly a surprise to hear Wenger bemoaning this in an Arsenal.com report.
The Prof said, “It’s a concern. We have lots of room for improvement and we need to do that quickly.
“If you go anywhere in the world and have 15 corners against you, you will concede because they should be so difficult to defend.
“I have a lot of talent at my disposal but Tottenham are a very tall side. Players like Jan Vertongen and Younes Kaboul are very tall and they defended well.”
It is not just corners either, but free kicks from wide positions and crosses from open play. Maybe losing Olivier Giroud, perhaps our best player in the air, has something to do with our lack of success, but with great technical players like Ozil and Cazorla to put balls in, we should still do better. No doubt this will be worked on during the training sessions and could give Arsenal a significant weapon.
With the amount of possession and corners that Arsenal get, just the occasional goal from them would make a big difference at the end of the season. But can we make them count?