Latest Articles
Can The Rest Of Europe Catch Up To Bayern?
Post comment
Although Bayern Munich were pushed all the way by Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League final, their victory allows us to reflect on a remarkable season. They've set a high bar...
No Shame In Being Second Or Third Best
4 comments
England have been usurped at the top of the UEFA coefficients by Spain, while Germany are not far behind. That's fine, says Philip Cornwall, as long as TV money is spent wisely...
All Articles
There can be little doubt that the defining theme running through Arsenal's recent string of high-profile defeats has been the utter shambles that currently represents the side's rear-guard.
Be it Laurent Koscielny's ludicrous bear hug on Edin Dzeko in mid-January or Nacho Monreal's novel approach to defensive positioning on Sunday, the individual and collective haplessness of the Gunners' backline has been glaringly apparent in the past weeks. But for all the problems that face Arsene Wenger surrounding his defective defenders, another less pronounced but similarly perplexing puzzle confronts him at the other end of the pitch: his attack simply does not seem to make sense.
For all the criticisms directed at the various Arsenal sides in the club's barren post-Vieira years, a natural cohesion once play enters the final third could generally been taken as a given. Not with this year's vintage. The Arsenal of 2012/13 are too often blunted by the apparent incompatibility of their frontline.
No-one personifies this struggle more succinctly than the man tasked with providing the side's attacking focal point: Olivier Giroud. Given that Giroud is the club's first choice centre forward and thus (in theory) Arsenal's primary goal-getter, his strengths - and his limitations - should surely dictate his team's methods of attack; instead the opposite seems have occurred.
Robust, powerful in the air and elusive within the penalty box, the Frenchman is a striker who is in his element meeting deliveries from the wings, be it floated crosses or low cut-backs. But yet not a single one of the club's wide options can provide these services. Indeed, the first-choice wide pairing of Lukas Podolski and Theo Walcott are not providers at all. They are players in the 'wide forward' mould: shuttlers who tend to run out-to-in, who when on the ball look to shoot and score rather than cross and create. Which is all well and good, but an archetypal target man is far from a natural bedfellow for such players.
Wenger's other suitors on the flanks alternate between Santi Cazorla, Tomas Rosicky, Aaron Ramsey and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain - tidy ball-players to a man, but all creators who will drift infield rather than seeking out the by-line. These are schemers, who are on a constant search for the lethal slide-rule pass, the pass which Giroud's relative lack of pace renders unlikely. Even the side's full backs - with the possible exception of second-choice Carl Jenkinson - prefer to cut in and play the ball rather than dash down the line and centre it.
In short, things are being made awfully difficult for the striker.
Of course, such tactical nuances are very much secondary when the player himself put in the sort of clown-footed display which Giroud did on Sunday, but a paucity of appropriate service was nonetheless part of the striker's sorry story. Indeed, the game's finest cross came from the left boot of our man himself, whipped over from the left flank midway through the second half. Suffice to say, the ball sailed across the six-yard box to no avail.
Wenger's other genuine striking option is to deploy the newly-moneyed Walcott in his much- publicised 'favoured position'. To his credit, when stationed there, Walcott's pace does duly encourage his opponents to retreat those precious few yards so as to free up space for whoever comprises his supporting trident. Of these, though, only Cazorla is a reliable goal threat, with Jack Wilshere still without a league goal this year and the erratic Podolski - dropped for the derby - probably the best of a painfully inconsistent rest.
The suspicion also remains with Walcott that he too often comes up short at the very top level; that an inability to function with his back to goal and a less-than-adhesive first touch renders him less effective against the game's meaner defences. It's an accusation with which Bayern Munich's rear-guard would likely raise a knowing eyebrow in agreement.
Bizarrely, the player who makes the most sense leading Arsenal's line is Gervinho. He is the only centre forward naturally keen to drop deep and engage with those behind him, thereby vacating the very area which Walcott and Podolski so relish breaking forward to infiltrate. In this sense, the Ivorian would - in theory - appear to represent the snuggest fit of the three. In reality, of course, Gervinho is Gervinho, and so the translation of theory to practice tends to fall flat on its face, shinning the ball into touch in the process.
And so it seems likely that Giroud will remain the man to spearhead the club's disjointed attack as Arsenal toil into the season's latter stages. It is by no means a poor attack; like the rest of the team, there is talent in the ranks - not of world-class pedigree, but talent enough to see off most opponents. But moments of technical mastery or flat-out excitement from the likes of Cazorla or Walcott can often serve to disguise the bigger picture: Arsenal's frontline lacks the systemic fluency which would truly ruffle the game's better defences. It is telling that in their seven games this term against the league's current top four sides, Arsenal have only once managed more than a single goal, earning just four points from a possible 21.
It's the absence of this fluency that looks likely to spell the difference between elite-level European competition and Thursday night excursions to Dagestan. It's a fluency that was showcased to devastating effect at the Emirates Stadium a fortnight ago, but by the Bavarian visitors as opposed to the impotent hosts. Perhaps most troublingly, it is this fluency that was until recently the very essence of Wenger's Arsenal: classy forward units that clicked effortlessly into their ruthless top gear at will.
It is no longer the case for today's incarnation, who need to resolve their issues up top as well as at the back if they are to battle fruitfully against what seems to be a genuine north London sea-change.
- Post a Comment
- View the Comments Page
Post Comment
