Don’t let the number of goals conceded deceive you, our defence could have easily conceded fewer.
Seven goals conceded from the first ten games of the season is not bad at all but I won’t be surprised if some sections of the fanbase start to express dissatisfaction with that record because of how easily we could have conceded less. Also given how excellent our GA (goals against) record was last season, then Arsenal fans can be forgiven for expecting less in the total of goals conceded this season.
However we will be deceived if we only use the raw stats to judge our defense this season. Judging with the eyes then we’ve probably had the best defence in the PL this season regardless of whether we’ve conceded fewer goals than anyone else or not. The Gunners have had arguably the best defensive display in the League this season with that resolute performance against Man City. Even though we conceded two in that game which just goes to show the strength that our defensive unit possesses collectively.
Furthermore, out of the seven goals we’ve conceded this season only three of them will be of any concern to us and those are first; Haaland’s opener against us where we could have easily defended that situation better with Calafiori and Gabriel particularly being guilty of poor defending.
Secondly James Justin’s second goal against us at the Emirates where Trossard could have done better with tracking back.
And finally Cameron Archer’s goal where Saliba could have easily prevented him taking the shot off in what was a very rare mistake from the Frenchman. The reasons why only these three goals should be of any note to us is because of the unique situations we conceded the other four in, Joao Pedro’s and John Stones’ were when we had ten men on the pitch so it’s had to comment, then Justin’s first against us was an absolute freak goal because Raya had it covered without the deflection and the goal against Bolton was the only goal we’ve conceded outside the league with the Gunners conceding from a very rare foray from the visitors in that game. It is also worth noting that we had Jorginho on Transition control that day and a 16-year-old in goal for us!
You can be worried for a defense being poor or regressive when there are clear patterns with the way they’re conceding goals, which is absolutely not the case as noted above with the number of goals we’ve conceded so far.
We’ll concede fewer and fewer goals as the season goes by and we should not be worried for our defense losing it’s solidity from last season!
We conceded 29 goals last season, will we be able to better that tally this campaign?
KENNETH BENJAMIN.
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Surely they are brilliant, the mentality Monsters, if I may borrow the term from a certain pundit
Having a great defense helps, but doesn’t guarantee you anything. For example, look at us last year, and some utd teams had awful defense, but constantly outscored opponents to win games.
Balance is more important to me, and scoring 3 goals is a great form of defense, as well as 75%-80% possession is also a good form of defense.
The old adage scoring goals wins games, defense wins titles is more of a suggestion or advice than anything else.
Interesting points.
I had a quick look at the EPL final tables for the last ten seasons and the champions had the best defence in six (2 seasons jointly with another team). The champions had the second-best defence on three occasions and the third best just once. There were often not many goals in it one way or the other.
Quirkily, in 2019-20 Liverpool were champions with marginally the best defence (by 2 goals) over City in second place. However, City scored 102 goals – a massive 17 more than Liverpool did that season.
Their best test will probably come against Liverpool – who do have easily the best defence this season (albeit after only seven games) in the EPL. It should be an “interesting” game.
From all indication, it will be a massive game, there is a good chance we could be going into that match above them on the table as well..
It’s hard to rate Liverpool as having best defense this season. No team can be rated as having best defense at the moment until mid season when everything would become clearer. Arsenal for instance had tricky features/situations in some games and some other teams too. Liverpool has favourable injury record early this season everything can change mid season. We shall come to this conversation again. Our defense ain’t doing bad at the moment.
Had Rice and Trossard not got red-carded, we would’ve won the first five EPL games this season with our great defense, high-press and aerial threat
Arteta and the coaches have turned the team into a very strong title contender