It would be really bad to tell that the attacking options are not good for a team which has scored 59 goals from 22 encounters i.e. nearly 2.68 per match. But it would be more than fair to say the defending is horrible for a team which has conceded 25 goals and had only 7 clean sheets.
I don’t really feel Vermaelen has much to do with dreadful defending so as Sagna. The secondary culprits, I feel, would be left back and the defending midfielder. Alex song was good in that place and Arsenal miss him a lot. His replace Denilson is the one who is trying to go forward and defending thought is not as great as Song. Clichy was not upto his mark on the early part of the league and when he was finding his touch he was sidelined by an injury. Traore is really decent but his inexperience has cost him much. Of course, Gallas is aging, but he was and is quite good, if not great.
Our defending four or five (including midfielder) is a decent bunch. But in order to maintain clean sheets or to win the league, we need great bunch, something like which Barca or Chelsea has. So we can actually purchase a world class defender for a right price, but as it sounds, it is not so mandate and it is not going to happen, because of signing of Sol Campbell.
The main culprit, I feel, is the goalie. Alumnia has never been a world class goalie and Fabianski is good enough and again his inexperience can actually pull him down, as we saw against stoke in FA cup tie. He is a quick learner but putting him in the first team for this season would be a bad idea. So signing a world class goalie is a necessity. When the goalies of title runners are huge, ours atleast should be large enough. Shouldn’t he?
