How the mighty have fallen? By Sylvester Kwentua
Three seasons ago, Arsenal’s goal keeper ended the season as one of two goal keepers who kept a good number of clean sheets throughout the season; Wojciech Szczesny of Arsenal and Petr Cech, who was a Chelsea keeper at that time, were the two goal keepers with the enviable record. Even our defence was doing well at that time.
Fast forward to three seasons later, and one will be forced to ask “what has happened to the structure that helped us well defensively?” how come we now concede goals at will? Are we running a goals promotion for other teams? How come we can’t seem to shut down our defence? What is really happening? Oh, how is the mighty falling!
While watching the Arsenal versus Bayern Munich game, I had a brief conversation with a Chelsea fan friend of mine. He opined that even the great Cech would have conceded the goals that Ospina conceded, insisting that our defensive problems are beyond our goal keepers. We have issues with the entire team structure as a whole and that unless, we address it, world class goal keepers like Ospina and Cech will keep on conceding embarrassing and stupid goals, he said. To an extent, I concur with him.
Let us look at it this way; we conceded five goals away to Bayern Munich in the first leg after the boss was substituted. As soon, as he left the pitch, it was as if the whole defensive unit ran out of ideas on how to defend. Even Mustafi who gave us the lucky charm at the early stages of the season, was nowhere to be found. Bayern Munich saw that and as a good team, we were duly punished. I cry for Arsenal. The same thing happened in the second leg; we fell apart after the red card to the boss! As soon, as the Boss was given the marching order, I said to myself, “how we going to survive the pressure?” well, I got my answer at the end of the game.
The question I need to ask is, if the Boss was to get injured for the rest of the season, what is going to happen to our defence? It is better imagined! We need world class defenders and a good defensive system to help out the goal keepers. We have turned world class goal keepers to amateur goal keepers and it is not a good thing, especially for Ospina who still has some good years ahead of him. A solution needs to be found ASAP before it becomes too late. We are tired of being the whipping boys of other teams. We need a revolution! Don’t we?
Sylvester