Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

The Christmas gift for the fan with (almost) everything

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By Walter Broeckx

We know that one of the things that some part of the fans throw at Wenger is the fact that he can’t organise a defence. And that he is stubborn. And then they come up with the fact that he needs to get a defensive coach. Because of his stubbornness he doesn’t change things around and this is something that will never change and we are doomed for ever. Now I am not against a defensive coach but do we really need one?

And I think of last season people where screaming and shivering whenever we conceded a corner or an indirect free kick. Because we couldn’t defend them. Hence the need for a real specialist defensive coach.

Therefore I have tried to look at how we conceded our goals this season.  We have played 13 competitive games so far, so we should be able to get a feel of the numbers.

So I tried to put them in a table and I made a few categories in different ways we can concede goals. The goal in open play. The direct free kick goal which we have conceded a few this season. The penalties we got against us. And then also our Achilles heel from last season: defending the high ball on indirect free kicks and crosses. And I took the numbers for each competition we have played in so far in games where it mattered.

Goals against	open play	direct free kick	penalty	indirect free kick	corner
EPL	Liverpool *	MU	MU	Blackburn **
	Liverpool	MU
	MU	Sunderland
	MU
	MU
	MU
	MU
	Blackburn
	Blackburn *
	Blackburn **
	Tottenham***
	Tottenham
Total	12	3	1	1
%	70,59%	17,65%	5,88%	5,88%	0,00%
CL	Udinese			Dortmund	Olympiakos
Total	1			1	1
%	33,33%	0,00%	0,00%	33,33%	33,33%
Carling Cup	Shrewsbury
Total	1
%	100,00%	0,00%	0,00%	0,00%	0,00%
Total	14	3	1	1	1
%	70,00%	15,00%	5,00%	5,00%	5,00%
* = offside goal
**=own goal
***= handball goal

A first point to mention is that from the 17 goals we have conceded there are 3 that shouldn’t have counted. Two offside goals and one handball goal. That is 17% of the total goals against.

Not a figure to be happy with. But  nothing can be done to correct “mistakes” from the refs of their assistants. But as they have been counted I have taken them in the total numbers.

Another striking point is that oh my god we did conceded an extraordinary number of beautiful goals. As an Arsenal supporter they cut me like a knife but as someone who can admire a well taken shot flying in the top corner, I must say that some goals where just unstoppable.

The third and this time a  real striking point is the fact that in the PL we conceded no goals so far on corners. And that we only conceded 1 goal from an indirect free kick taken from the goal line. And even then the opposition didn’t score but we scored an own goal when the ball hit a knee from one of our players.

Last season our players and our coaching staff (a euphemism to not say Wenger) got all the dirty talk from some part of the fans that we couldn’t defend them. Okay, fair enough I would say but if it hadn’t been for a very stupid own goal we wouldn’t have conceded one goal from such a game situation so far in the PL. In fact we only conceded from a short taken corner in the CL when the whole team fell asleep and didn’t expect it to be taken like that. You just don’t see a corner taken short a lot in the EPL so I think it is down to not being used to it.

But from the “normal”  corner we didn’t concede a goal in the EPL so far this season. So it seems that even without the “so much needed” defensive coach we seemed to manage to turn a few things around. And even our “stubborn” manager was flexible enough to change something and looking at the numbers it seems to work so far.

So maybe with all the people who are saying that they are shaking on their knees whenever we get a corner against us: maybe it is time to relax a bit more because so far the numbers suggest that we are rather doing fine when defending corners this season.

And as we have rather a high number of injuries (Vermaelen out a few weeks, now Sagna out for many months)  and combine this with the fact that we have a few new players coming in from other countries and 2 young but promising players at right and left back I think the number of conceded goals will go down. The players need the time to get used to each other and to form partnerships. And I think they can only get better during the season.

Oh and according to our statistics last season we conceded around 30% of our goals on those that we could not defend. And this season this number is down to only 2 goals or 10% in all competitions and this includes an own goal. Not that bad for a team in desperate need for a defensive coach to organize us on dead balls.

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