Arsenal manager Unai Emery has been speaking about the problems with the Arsenal defence and how the whole team has to help out.
He also states that a lot of shots are not that important and do not pose a danger.
“Two things. First, we need to be competitive and we need to improve defensively, but it’s not all down to the defensive players, the goalkeeper, the midfield – it’s for all the team,” he said.
“Secondly, sometimes we are defending deep, more deep than we want to. Our block is more deep than we want usually. We don’t want to defend in that situation, too deep, many times.
“A lot of shots? They are shots. It’s not that important. They’re not a danger for us, really.
“We need to improve. We also need, as a team, to be more compact. We need to start our pressing a little more ahead.
“We could do that work better and, on Sunday at home against Aston Villa, we are going to try to do better.”
OK, where to start? Shots are important, you cannot score a goal without a shot, teams that concede fewer shots concede fewer goals, I am not too sure that Emery is doing himself any favours with that opinion.
He is right about the whole team helping out and that Arsenal defends too deep but the thing is this, he is the coach and this is not a new phenomenon, defending too deep and the whole team not helping out has been going on throughout his tenure.
So, he is not getting his demands across or the players are either ignoring his instructions or are confused by them.
But at least he acknowledges the problems and hopefully, he will find a solution.