Why? Typical Arsenal fans, tbh.
He was really poor on the first one and has to take a large portion of the blame. You can highlight other players (Ramsey) and the whole defence as a unit, but Bellerin got sacked in and was way too close to his centre back with no awareness of what was going on behind him. It was also pretty atrocious defending to get done so badly by the Bournemouth player who then scored.
It was definitely a bad performance in his part, but I think you’re really harsh to say that his defensive qualities haven’t improved at all @Mysty.
It’s obvious he wasn’t physically 100% and that ultimately dictated his performance.
We needed more rotation last night.
Wanna show me where I said we’d have won if bellerin was playing please??
All I was saying was we would have stood a much better chance had carl Jenkinson not been playing, I’ve said that about 5 times now
You are really unfair to him, singling him out while at least 2 other players have done worse than him particularly on this first goal. Actually the way I see it, regarding his positioning Bellerin was spot on in his movement for their first goal.
This is where it starts. Bellerin is right were he is supposed to be, minding their left attacking player (Fraser), Daniels is way behind and Ramsey is doing fuck all.
Here you can see Fraser starting to make a run behind Mustafi’s back (you can see him pointing with his hand that he wants the ball behind Mustafi). Bellerin again is exactly where he is supposed to be, minding their left attacking player and covering his run, Mustafi is actually the one who is drawn too much to the left and is completely unaware of the run behind his back. Bellerin has no choice but to cover that run and it is no business of his to mind their left back at this point. Look at Ramsey, absolutely no action in the center of the park and there are two players behind his back, invading his zone (right midfield). If Bellerin stays to the right (which he shouldn’t) there’s a huge gap in the center of the defense.
This is the moment where it is already too late for us. Daniels has invaded our field through the right flank of our defense while Ramsey has done fuck all defending (defending is not only done where the ball is), maybe thinking he is a center midfielder. Daniels is waving his hands for the ball, rubbing his eyes at all the space Ramsey has left for him down the right flank.
Right after this moment there is an episode where Ramsey turns his head to check the space behind him. A few moments later the long ball towards Daniels is played and Ramsey points to Bellerin to cover the space instead of doing just that himself. What sort of right midfielder does that? Maybe one who doesn’t think of himself as one, unaware of his role on the pitch.
This is the moment he points.
This is the moment of the pass. 
Ramsey, who knows their left back is all alone down our right flank, instead of covering that area is moving inside. Bellerin is not too far inside, his movement is defined by the movement of the center half. If he starts covering the area behind him too early (before the pass is played), he leaves the center of defense completely exposed. At this point if Mustafi moved to the right, Bellerin would have moved to the right but since Mustafi is still inside the left side of the pitch, Bellerin covers centrally. You can see Stanislas I think who is next to Xhaka also getting ready to make a run so imagine all the space in the center of defense if Bellerin moves to cover for Daniels before the pass is played.
All in all this is a collective defensive error (including midfield defending) and also credit to Bournemouth for exploiting the spaces between our defenders well but in no way is Bellerin at fault for this goal imo. I think there is little shame if you get turned by the attacker when defending at speed and it’s premature to call it his fault only because the goal happened in the area of the right back.
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Well analysed @Gladiator
Bellerin has no choice but to cover. Our whole defence looked like it shifted too far over and all bunched up. In fact, you can see Bellerin doesnt want to get sucked in and is still leaving a large gap between him and Mustafi.
Ramsey should be full aware of his man on his side and should be busting a gut to close that space Daniels had. Joke defending all round and it’s frailties like these that will not see us win the title.
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Indeed. He played with a knock.
tbf even if you excuse his positioning he still let the attacker cut inside towards goal too easily. It’s both a collective and individual error on the goal.
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I can’t fault the effort that went into that analysis Glads, top work.
Perhaps I was a bit harsh, and should have devoted my post more to criticising Ramsey than Bellerin (though I did make reference to Ramsey so I wasn’t entirely unaware on that front). I did also make reference to the overall positioning of the defence for the first goal. But yeah, you’ve convinced me that I should have made those two factors the main focus of any analysis of the first goal.
But I still stand by him letting himself get too easily turned in the box, and I think you are excusing him a bit too easily, that was really rather poor defending. You could see that turn coming a mile off and Bellerin could have done a lot better but got himself into a muddle. That still should not have resulted in a goal, even if Bellerin can’t be expected to successfully tackle their player in the box he should have been able to prevent their player getting in on goal so easily.
I’m not having a massive go at him or anything, so I don’t think I’m being really unfair (edit: though looking back at my post some of the language was perhaps a bit harsh so you may have a point). He’s a top player already (and will only get better) and at his age especially hes bound to have average/poor games from time to time, as well as making mistakes. I’m not pinning the result entirely on him, or even at all really, I just don’t think you can say that he had no share of the blame in any of yesterday’s goals.
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He did make a mess of tackling the player once he had sprinted back to get into a decent position to do so but a big reason for that was his momentum from sprinting back all that way left him very off balanced,
Ramsey 100% at fault IMO
No, I don’t think that’s where it starts. The whole thing started when they, in typical incoherent Arsenal style, decided to do a stupid press 2v3 against a Bournemouth back 3. I don’t even understand why there was an “interchange” with Iwobi, the rw, moving up to press the centre backs; Leave that to Ramsey instead and have the rw cover. That’s how most teams do and it’s much easier that way.
Alexis, is not on the right side of the ball in that screenshot either because he’d just pressed their right back higher up in a silly attempt to tackle the ball.
With the team being so narrow, with the defensive line quite high there, you’d want to see them putting in a tackle on the ball carrier to prevent that switch of play in the first place. But because so many players are out of position after that attempted “press”, you can see that they don’t even have enough players to close him down.
And why should Ramsey man-mark their left back? Since when did that become a “rule”? Perfectly normal to leave the wings open and then deal with switches of play like most zonal teams would do. Just a personal preference here, but I don’t want to see that kind of man-marking in the first place. It would create a big space for their centre back (or Arter who was dropping back) to walk right into and I don’t want to see that either.
Most likely, in this case, Bellerin should have moved a meter or two closer to their left back and Ramsey should have sprinted to fill the gap between Bellerin and Mustafi when the ball was switched. Of course he doesn’t quite do that at the intensity required, so it’s still some kind of mistake but meh, you had like what, 5 or 6 mistakes before that.
It’s a coaching error.
Actually it is where it starts because I wasn’t talking about Bournemouth’s attack but rather about Bellerin’s defensive input once their attack moved into our half since it was his defensive play that was under scrutiny and even more so the moment he got sacked inside since that’s the part Jakey criticized. But thanks for the input.
To move on further, do you have a habit of putting words into people’s mouths? I am fairly certain that I didn’t ever say Ramsey should have man-marked Daniels. Actually I am pretty convinced I said that he left his area (right midfield) unattended. It’s called closing space. Yeah, pretty sure I said area on a number of occasions, so I was talking more like zonal defending and you picked man-marking? Funny.
I am unable to explain why him and Iwobi switched positions but since his position was right midfield at the time, he is responsible for that zone.
To further address your points, I did say that I found at least 2 players at more fault regarding positioning than Bellerin and I did say it is a collective defensive error. It is normal to leave the wings open when the wings are empty, when there are players invading your wings you have to closed them down. Pretty sure that yeah, this is a rule. And this isn’t man marking, it’s putting bodies in the area that you are exposed. It is not like we didn’t have a free body in midfield that moved like a headless chicken without any contribution to the defensive efforts of the team. If all passage of play was concentrated in the right side of Bournemouth’s attack that’s one thing but when they put people on the opposite side of the pitch you don’t just wait for them to move the ball there before you take action (if you are defending properly that is, since as I said defending is not only done where the ball is). Ramsey should have moved more to the right and Iwobi should have followed him centrally. Instead, Ramsey, despite being aware of Daniels presence behind him, continued to move to the left of our defense without executing any real defensive role. It really mustn’t be hard to see. And there is no threat from any central defender as far as I can see since both of them seem to have stayed in their own half but maybe you would have preferred Ramsey to move into the center circle just in case any one of them started to look suspicious. At the moment of the pass and the moments prior, when there is more than enough time to close down on Daniels and close up the space, Ramsey is doing absolutely nothing on the pitch.
Yeah that’s not how you defend, there are rules to that you know. You midfielders don’t just burst into and disrupt a defensive line.
I just felt there was a lot of knee-jerk scapegoating towards Bellerin because he was involved in all goals while he really didn’t do that bad.
Ideally you’d want them all to have done better but for me defending has it’s prevention and it’s control function and a good defensive unit prevents chances first before having to deal and control them and if Ramsey tended to the right side instead of carelessly transferring all responsibility to Bellerin that chance could have easily been prevented as we would have had two bodies on Daniels. As @Kaner said, the momentum from sprinting back left a lot of room for error, once you are out of position and have to sprint to track back you are not prepared to defend properly and there is a big element of luck to making a successful tackle.
I think if an example has to be made of poor full-back defending in a one on one situation with the attacker, Monreal vs Sterling at the Etihad is a primer example.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
So you are telling me that Arsene coaches the team to attempt a half assed press? Seems to me it’s more of an Alexis not knowing when to call off the dogs and yelling at his teammates to help him as I’ve seen him do on numerous occasions.
No, but that’s the way I interpreted it. Man-marking was perhaps too strong a word, but you did make it sound like you wanted him to concentrate a lot more on the opponent and not the other reference points.
Says who? Plenty of great coaches would disagree. All of this depends on how many opponents we’re talking about and what your strongest reference points are (should we focus more on the ball or the opponent etc etc.). In this case, there’s only one opponent, so a narrow shape is to be expected and it’s really no issue.
They created an overload on their right side, so it’s normal to shift across to stay close to your teammates. The back four had squeezed up and since Bournemouth like to play between the lines, I can only imagine that they wanted to give them as little space in these areas as possible, and recover the ball out wide. So IMO, Ramsey does the right thing when he passes him on to Bellerin.
But again (sorry to repeat myself), I have big problems with the amount of players behind the ball there. All of them, with the possible exception of Giroud, should be back there to help so that an aggressive press in that wide area is possible.
This is normal zonal stuff that a lot of teams do in similar situations. Your fullback moves out wide, your midfielder or winger drops into the defensive line to then create a 2v1.
Arsenal have done this plenty this season, which is why I’m a bit skeptical of the idea that Ramsey simply had to move out wide to deal with their left back.
Not even close to what I wrote. The coaching error, is a case of them attempting different things/not being quite in sync. It’s not always really clear of what they’re really supposed to do.
They probably don’t do enough work on it on the training ground.
I’ll buy that Arsene Wenger probably prioritizes other things over the defensive side of the game, because we are and have been a slightly above average (and bang average many a time) defensive unit for a long while now. However Ramsey acting like he was playing centrally yesterday when he’s supposed to be playing on the wing doesn’t help. I really doubt Arsene was in favor of him playing out of position for almost the entire match. Ramsey is such a diva and he’s commented before about how he see’s himself as a central midfielder etc. I’m not surprised at his performance whatsoever.
Oh yeah! Injury list is piling up quickly as usual.
Oh fuck off
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What’s our injury run been like this season in comparison to other clubs ? Anyone have the stats ?