The coach has to take a sizeable portion of the blame here.
Either he hasn’t got his players to follow tactical instruction or he hasn’t given them instructions that work in the first place. Both of which are a failure.
When we’re getting countered like this from losing the ball in the opposing penalty area, it’s clear that we’re a pack of bums. Which includes the coach and his staff.
Any defence with Xhaka in front of them is going to suffer greatly.
Like I said, we have also seen games where we had more functional pressing. Our personnel situation has been especially diabolical since Holding went down and our midfield isn’t good enough. It isn’t that simple.
If you brought back George Graham we’d be far better defensively because he continually coached the players defensive positioning.
Looking at Pogba float through our defense was absolutely shocking
What astounds me is the way we cant absorb any concerted sort of pressure. Liverpool away is a stand out game for ineptitude.
That was unforced errors due to Liverpool just building pressure by walking through the defence. That game above all others showed what we dont have player/leaders type wise.
Worryingly that game also showed how inept we set up from Emery though. For the life of me I cant fathom the reasoning in trying to go on the front foot up their.
Honestly dont see with what we have in games like this and passages of games on the road we dont just go 2 banks of four.
Might not be sexy and purist but where miles away from being able to impose that game on top teams at the moment.
Basically personnel but a more flexible approach to tactics has to be addressed.
Before Holding went down we drawed like 4 games in 6. And we have had bad performances and have been inconsistent throughout the whole season.
We had a long run unbeaten… we haven’t been good all year though, but certainly when injuries piled up our defense got even worse…
No one is arguing we have been good - no one is arguing our tactics have been better consistently… but to suggest there weren’t signs and this is at least primarily a personnel issue, especially now seems selective, but I appreciate your viewpoint.
Its that I’ve been saying during that run that our performances weren’t that good and that the unbeaten run masked that a bit. When those draws started too happen our bad performances caught up with the results. We obviously miss those players, but I’m not sure those signs of improvement were there since we actually started to get the results like how we performed.
yeah I don’t think the signs were consistent, but we definitely had a few games where we were fully tactically functional, and that I scarcely remember in the last couple of years. But bottom line, we have a long way to climb in terms of squad quality, injuries or not. We are a distance right now from 5th best squad quality imho… previous regime left us with shambles and some really dumb deals.
I think it’s both, but moreso the system at this point. Emery has been his own worst enemy, persisting with a joke of a professional football player, Xhaka in the midfield. You wanna push the full backs so far up the pitch? Okay fine have a mobile midfield that can cover the area they are leaving exposed. Elneny performed that role quite well under Arsene, but hasn’t even been given a chance, and I think we all know he’s a better player than Xhaka.
Our defence is naive and sometimes bordering on clueless.
When we play top opposition clubs who are renowned for being ruthless on the counter attack, like against Man U, then it’s obvious we are going to let in goals when we push forward and leave ourselves open at the back.
So the fact we have players like Xhaka and Mustafi, who constantly make mistakes, and FB,s who pile forward but treat defending as an occupational hazard, then it’s no wonder teams find it easy to score against us.
What I don’t understand is that Emery has seen this happen in almost every game and still keeps picking the players who repeat the same mistakes and still doesn’t organise them into some sort of organised defensive unit.
Are the players so stupid that they can’t follow instructions?
If so, why does Emery keep picking the same players?
Not a lot to choose from tbf…
Our defence would be very good if only other top team gave our players enough time to organise themselves during the match. In the Man C game the goalie kick the ball out constantly instead of passing it out because we’ve too slow. We look like a bunch of individuals playing together for the first time. This isn’t about the amount of money a player cost it’s about discipline and whoever is coach our back line needs sacking.
Not. Sure. If. Serious. 
I’m trying to move the mistakes in defence off the players and onto the people who’s job it is to form a defence that works. If our players are out of position and can’t defend how did we do so well against Chelsea. They still had quality wingers attacking and we covered them. I think we might do better to get a defencesive coach in, not easy I know but if nothing else park the bus. A draw is a point…rant over
How about we get Guendouzi to be our engine? Get from one box to another in no time. Learn to shoot, learn to block shots.
He and Torreira could be this generation’s Petit and Vieira respectively.
Our midfield needs to look “fuller” before our defence starts to develop more confidence, in my opinion
I’m so inclined to think now that Mustafi is our only problem in defence. What we have is a good EPL defence. It’s on a par with Manchester United’s, Chelsea’s and Spurs’.
Kos and Sokratis and Holding as a long term replacement for Kos have the ability to be our CB defensive pairing without any calamities
Yeah 4 of the 5 keeper and defenders had very good games yesterday, with the one exception being the fucking Clown Mustafi.
I think we if get into the CL, the names mentioned above will be proven to be completely inadequate for that level. Reality is need actual quality at CB and FB
Good point, sevchenko, but the sad truth is, we’re not even going to be in the CL to win it. Thats probably not even Emery’s target at board level.
We’re expected to get into the CL and continue to qualify for it. Whether or not that buys us better defenders is inconsequential