Here's some info i got from OptaJoe:

"Arsenal have now gone 14 Champions League away games without a clean sheet. Vulnerable."

Let's hope we'll be able to beat braga and start keeping clean sheets as well....

first off, it's still early in the season and despite the morale sapping loss to the sp*rs and then the surprise loss to braga, we've still got every chance to win all the competitions that we're in.

however, if there's a reason why we won't win anything this season, it will be the same problems that i've been speaking about every season since the invicibles era: this pattern of being very wasteful in front of goal and having such a soft defensive underbelly is our major archilles heel.



wasteful in front of goal:
offensively, we are a joy to watch and when we pull it off, there is NO other team in the BPL that can even come close to to matching the exquisite beautiful on display. we are also hardworking offensively. however, we take too many chances to score. chief culprits this season for me has been arshavin and chamakh. i'm not saying that they're crap, but arshavin has missed way too many one on one situations while chamakh has missed a few sitters himself. the joy though is that chamakh has added headers to how arsenal score these days.

also, like some have mentioned previously , arsenal players insist on too much overelaborate passing while we've all but discarded the art of shooting until we are desperate or we're in showboating mood. i've always maintained that we must learn to mix the elaborate goals with the shots from distance and also the simple tap ins. right now, arsenal are pretty predictable in that we will always choose to keep passing unless it's a counter attack. so teams just basically set up a bus and wait for the arsenal players to pass the ball to death. then when they're desperate, long shots become predictable as well.

soft defensive underbelly:
in the past, when flamini left and song wasn't in the first team, we had no steel in midfield even though we had lehmann in goal. lehmann was dropped when he suffered a loss of form, but then song stepped up. then when song stepped up to the plate, almunia and then our centrebacks of toure and gallas took turns having slumps in form.

this season, fabianski has less flaps, but then our defenders have been having VERY sub par performances, especially clichy in my book. both squillaci and koscielny have not been consistent as well even though they have individiually good in some matches. only sagna has emerged with his reputation enhance with better crosses and his once in a blue moon goal.



again, i'm still hopeful that we'll win something this season, but winning merely papers over these two very major issues that wenger needs to address. if he can resolve this two issues, we will win a lot more and lose very little, and with that, will come our consistency. it's been something that wenger has failed to address (whether it's because of injuries or his philosophy, i don't know) and something that i've been saying for a very long time.

but no matter what happens, i've always been, and always will be a gunner.

This post has been edited by lostasylum: Nov 24 2010, 05:17 PM

somehow, i found it hard to swallow when I looked at the champions' league tables this morning and saw that sp*rs are top of their group that includes inter milan and werder bremen, while arsenal are still sweating on qualification in a group that consists of newcomers and non CL heavyweights.

ugh, me needs coffee....