{"id":1276,"date":"2011-08-11T12:37:01","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T12:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/?p=1276"},"modified":"2011-08-11T12:37:01","modified_gmt":"2011-08-11T12:37:01","slug":"poor-defence-holding-arsenal-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/?p=1276","title":{"rendered":"Poor defence holding Arsenal back?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It might just be this writer\u2019s nostalgia, and of course the game has changed over the last decade or so. But the repeatedly bad performances of a leaky defence grates someone who can remember that famous, air-tight well-regimented defence that would squeeze the life out of opposition attacks.<\/p>\n

Is it any co-incidence that since Tony Adams (if Parlour was the Romford Pele, then surely Adams was the Romford Bobby Moore) left the club, they have only won one title, compared to the four that he won during his playing career for the Gunners.<\/p>\n

Now the expansion of the number of European club matches has of course killed to some extent the idea that a player could go through a season playing every match without fail, and that back four didn\u2019t play together all the time either, but the defence was the rock upon which many an Arsenal title has been built, play with all the flair you want, but the aim of the game is to score more goals than your opponents,\u00a0 having a leaky defence means that Arsenal have to work harder for their wins than they used to.<\/p>\n

Those looking at free bets\u00a0<\/a> note how Arsene Wenger was extremely fortunate to inherit a core of a side that contained Seaman, Adams, Keyown, Dixon & Winterburn and that\u2019s before we mention Viera & what\u2019s his name, that Dutch bloke who was quite good.<\/p>\n

Whilst Wenger certainly galvanised that side to bigger things, you couldn\u2019t have asked for a better set of players to form a team around.<\/p>\n

So has there been any improvement in what\u2019s laughably called the off season (barely 2 months, and that\u2019s in a year without a major international tournament) they\u2019ve won 2 of the 6 games they\u2019ve played since the beginning of July, and none of those wins have been in the last 2 weeks.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not exactly the form you want to take with you into a season when you want to win that first piece of silverware in 6 years.<\/p>\n

So what now? Would you place a free bet<\/a>\u00a0on silverware this season?<\/p>\n

Well Arsene Wenger has been shown a lot of faith, the team isn\u2019t all that bad, having run strongly in 4 competitions for 2\/3rds of last season, it\u2019s just that the defence is the Achilles heel that is holding Wenger back as he endeavours to drive the club to become trophy winners again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It might just be this writer\u2019s nostalgia, and of course the game has changed over the last decade or so. But the repeatedly bad performances of a leaky defence grates someone who can remember that famous, air-tight well-regimented defence that would squeeze the life out of opposition attacks. Is it any co-incidence that since Tony […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,35,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arsenal-fc","category-premier-league","category-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1276"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1280,"href":"https:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276\/revisions\/1280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arsenaltalk.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}