The answer is simple – you don’t play crap! by FFFanatic
Parking the bus has always been able to get you points. Lots of them? Not so much. The reason it works is because you play for the draw. You do not commit forward. You focus on stopping the other team and you are perfectly happy with not scoring. You get points by then getting lucky and the opposition switching off. Chelsea do it, Swansea did it. Over a whole season unless you have quality like Fabregas, Costa and Hazard to be your only three forward players you will not be winning games but drawing. This won’t stop teams doing this age old tactic against us. And how do you beat it?
The answer to the question is simple – you don’t play crap. Swansea defended well last night but our problem wasn’t tactics or anything, rather our players just did not perform. It was like they had a hangover and couldn’t make things tick. We STILL got clear cut chances and just failed to convert them. Alexis’ miss eight yards out with the keeper squared up was diabolical, Theo’s rebound not much better. Giroud missed a good chance as well. We had numerous breaks into the box and did poor final balls. We were poor. Our defence weren’t much better – they had one attack in the second half and scored. ONE! Ospina, Bellerin, Koscielny, Mert and even Monreal all had bad moments in the move which lead to the goal – you can’t do that!
I’d like to think this is a blip. We were by far the better team and on a different night under the same conditions Alexis scores, Giroud scores or hell, even Monreal scores. We didn’t. If we want to improve then our option is to get someone who scores in those games but honestly I don’t see them. I don’t watch enough Spanish, French, Italian or German leagues to know what talent they have though so I won’t say they’re not out there – I just hope Wenger can find them. Still, one goal early in that game and we’d have won comfortably. Just damn poor striking and damn poor defence. Swansea deserve ZER0 credit because honestly sticking eight players in your own box is not football!
FFFanatic