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Popcorn. Check. Huge vat of expensive sickly-sweet fizzy pop. Check. Oversized bag of newsagent bought peanut M&Ms. Check. Feature length movie of Spurs beating Arsenal. Check. Room of sheepish looking Gunners. Check. Old man tutting at the back. Check.
It doesn’t sound like much fun that’s for sure (sweet treats aside), but Per Mertesacker has revealed that he and his fellow defenders made themselves re-review their wretched performance at White Hart Lane in the hope of rectifying the back line frailties that allowed Spurs to score twice in two minutes.
Stressing that Arsene Wenger always makes the squad watch matches again on video, the BFG underlined that such was the frustration felt amongst the squad that the players took in upon themselves to further investigate.
“We do [this] before every game,” Mertesacker told Arsenal Player.
“But the defenders did it on our own and I think there has been quite an improvement. We saw ourselves as a unit on the television and I think it was a good thing to do because sometimes you have a different view on the pitch and you feel different.
“It was everybody’s decision [to do it]. We all had the feeling there was something to do so everybody was involved and everyone felt we needed to improve and speak more.
“The most important thing we learned was to cover each other more. There were a lot of situations where there was no pressure on the ball and the back four was not prepared for any balls between us.
“We are always watching videos. That is not the point. Sometimes it is good to see situations and I think the very important scenes against Tottenham made it more clear for everyone.”
Now far be it for Arseblog News to rain on Per’s parade (Per-ade per-haps?) but while it’s great to hear our defenders are scrutinising their performances it’s not as if Bayern and Swansea didn’t have chances to score.
The Germans had 21 efforts and failed to find the back of the net, more luck than judgement surely (?), while Angel Rangel could easily have given the Swans the lead at the Liberty Stadium on Saturday after another diagonal pass sliced open the defence much like Spurs did.
Naturally, you’re not going to restrict sides to no chances at all, but let’s not get carried away assuming two clean sheets mean we’ve solved all our problems. We did that at the beginning of the season and…well you know what happened.
Good wins though.
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Most of Bayern’s efforts were from well outside the area, never troubling Fabianski.
I’d have to say we have been much improved overall, dropping deeper and closing out space in our final third. An improvement in team ethic rather than just the back 4 I would say, also Koscielny coming in for Vermaelen shouldn’t be overlooked.
We definitely need to keep the same attitude going forwards though, not assume our problems are solved and slip back into old habits.
Agree completely with the assessment of the Bayern chances.
On top of that, the way Swansea’s chances turned out highlight the way they are trying to do things differently.
Rangel’s chance mirrored both Spurs goals. The difference? Monreal steps up to play him offside, but immediately realises it didn’t work and busts a gut going after him. As we are playing deeper, Arteta is close enough to go after him as well. Perhaps Rangel should have scored, but its much harder to do with 2 defenders breathing down your neck.
Not to say its going to be perfect; all defenses get breached, but if we keep playing like the last 2 games it will be much harder.
At the start of the season we defended well however our attack was not use to playing with each other and had not gelled. Now we are defending well and our attackers have had time to settle, and hit some form which means we can capitalize on our defensive platform. Which is good for me, and certainly we’ll need that for our remaining games, especially man u.
Why we didn’t do this earlier in the season though, is a fucking mystery to me!
I imagine it would help. Watching the game and playing it are entirely different, because when you watch the game, you see it from everyone’s viewpoint, not just your own. So perhaps the back four can better understand how to work as a unit, and the consequences of their own actions on their team-mates.
Guys if you have a chance I finished my animation on arsenal’s cannon unleashing hell on the Spuds http://youtu.be/TC-LicHhGMY
good work
I like how the cannon positions itself for the second shot… to finish it off once and for all.
In the style of Bane “You’ll just have to imagine top 4!” Boom!
Why are the defenders taking it upon themselves to re-watch the videos? Should the manager not hound them for such a disastrous performance and make them do it? Good on Per and the rest of them for taking it upon themselves, but its the managers job to motivate and make the players improve…
Ofcourse they watch videos every week. Mert was just noting the difference between the tottenham game and the Munich game. It was an indictment of the midfield more than the defense, the defense got a lot of cover in the munich game and not a lot in tottenham game. He’s just stating that the midfielders realised that their contribution is essential to clean sheets.
The midfielders (jack wilshere included) are the reason why the defence is been error prone this season. And its the midfielders who should take the blame for most of our defensive errors they put the defenders under unneccessary pressure by not positioning themselves well or not pressing well.
The only midfielders who do this well are ramsey, arteta and diaby. When arteta and ramsey are playing we aren’t troubled defensively and our defenders look very confidant, I have no doubt vermalaen will cut the mistakes from his game if he is not put under unneccesary pressure by midfielders not doing their job.
Notice that our clean sheets come when wilshere isn’t playing. Wilshere is a beast when it comes to attacking but defensively he is tactically stupid. He should learn from ramsey, arteta or diaby.
@ least we know they are doing something about it. That’s all I ask for.
I’ve always thought the problems were so glaring and Ñobody was doing anything about it.
Hopefully, before the beginning of next season they’ll have a near perfect system….
Is pressing and holding ‘Shift’ and then pressing ‘@’ really that much easier/quicker than pressing ‘a’ then pressing ‘t’.
Look at the 7th rule: http://news.arseblog.com/comment-policy/
Your statement is a question and you didn’t end it with a question mark…..I’m just saying
I fucking love Per. His first interview on Arsenal Player made me fall in love with him. His 360 spin move made me wanna marry him, and his dance at the WC2010 which is the Mertesacker gif dance made me wanna have his children. He’s the classic example of a not so blessed athlete, but wonderful footballer, the complete opposite of say Marvel Wynne.
Nacho monreal I bet gulped to see Aaron “i run like pussy” lennon whiz past him for the 2nd totts goal bah!, he should have been tracking his run. Not critisising just pointing that out much like the video I assume did. Defenfing like a unit is the key.
*defending as a unit.
one thing i hate about our our team is the way we start to talk things soon after we put on a couple of victories and lose the plot very nexy match
Good point. The most frustrating thing about this season has been the inconsistency. We’ve had some great performances this season, notably Man City and Bayern Munich away, yet at other times we have been utter garbage. I still can’t believe we were beaten by Bradford and Blackburn.
It’s now absolutely vital that we maintain this form over these last nine games. I knew Spurs would bottle it and crack up: that’s just the nature of that club. But we must make sure that we take advantage. No mmore slip-ups.
Our defence is improving is the latest sound bite out of the Arsenal spin machine. Bit late for this season . Arsenal goal keeper Szczesny is quoted as saying. “It is halfway through March and we’ve lost everything”. Szczesny is honest. Arsenal has now gone eight seasons without a trophy. In that time Liverpool won the Community Shield , FA Cup the UEFA Super Cup and the Champions League. Arsenal need to turn off the spin machine and start winning trophies, plain and simple.
Hahahahaha. Angel Rangel… shame.
That Rangel chance on Saturday scared the crap out of me – carbon copy of the Sp**s goals.
Need to press the ball much more consistantly.
But credit where its due, the individual performances at the back have really improved.
OT, but does anyone know where Frimpong was yesterday? Not even on the bench for Fulham.
Can’t say i can pass judgement until i hear Robbie Savage’s precise analysis on this
Another OT – Blogs did not run a “By the numbers” for Swansea vs Arsenal
7amkickoff does the By the numbers, and he’s over from the US to watch a couple of games so that’s why.
Watching tapes of our defending? Using them to improve our defense as a unit?? The person who came up with this idea deserves a knighthood for services to football and sport in general……
Sarcasm aside, I’m glad the guys are working on their problems
Well said James, that’s what a manager’s paid for. Why is it whenever you remotely criticise Wenger on this everyone dislikes it?
Well, I disliked his reply because Per says himself that they always watch the videos. To completely ignore this and pretend the defence has only done their ‘extra sessions’ is just taking it out of context to insult Wenger.
Out defence isn’t the best and the kinds of goals we let in at time should make it on to blooper dvds. But I think a big problem is that are midfield dosent offer enough protection and is too passive..They allow teams to play in ways that teams don’t allow us to play. Who in our team can really tackle. Wilshere puts himself about but he’s not viera. Arteta while he makes tackles and interceptions, this is due to his reading of the game..He has no pace athleticism.. Wenger has forgotten or been unable to reproduce the balance between flair and grit…All our best teams had this…invincibes. Pires ,Pv, Gs freedy…That midfield was so creative yet wen they had to do the dirty work they did it well even pires (helped by the best left back who happens to be a bellend) but I digress.
We used to have guys who could come into the side like parlour and edu who could slip seamlessly into the side offer something different but also provide strength and and just general beastness in midfield. I think the two tottenham goals were a wake up call for our midfield that they have to work aswel.
Prior to the last two games, walcott was refusin to track past our half way line, despite his documented limitations how many times do u see giroud busting a gut to chase a player back he shudnt have responsibilty for. Oh my god I’m about to agree slightly with stewart robson -___-. But he had a point when he said our midfield can’t tackle. I don’t compeletely agree but compared to the midfields we’ve had in the past..The only team that gets away with this is barca, they don’t tackle but swarm like flies to shit, no1 else in the world does this as effectively. Sometimes its clear the players are trying but they some of them just don’t have tackling as a strong part of their game..
This is my biggest grievance about wenger..He has overlooked what made his title winnin sides so special, they would slick teams off the park but also bully them..Beat them in every aspect of the game. Teams used to leave highbury shellshocked at what just happened. They couldn’t ge the ball but when they did they would be on the floor without it courtesy of viera or gilberto for eg. I’m not talking about stoke like orcism but that bit of dirt and cuntism is needed sometimes..C dennis bergkamp.
Just wanted to let arseblog know that a “friend” was on the mirror’ s website and under the Arsenal section saw the term BFG for mertesecaker. Forgive me if I am wrong but I believe you came up with the term. Just wanted to let you know that it’s about to go mainstream.