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如果你係, 呢篇嘢值得一睇, 有90%我都贊同 
Arsenal's thin squad is a myth / What we lack as a team
By Jo螔 Che on Saturday, April 12, 2008
Wenger has come for a lot of criticism about the size of the Arsenal squad now that the title race is out of our hands and we're out of Europe. It is a question I have been mulling over for a few months now, even when we were doing okay.
There is quite a reliable or decent short term back-up for every position apart from left back. Apart from central midfield and central defence, it is not cost effective to buy experienced cover for every position (unless you are Chelsea and have money to throw around). That is why most teams cannot cover for multiple injuries in the same area like Arsenal have had with van Persie, Eduardo and Rosicky.
I have come to the conclusion that the squad is not too small. This is the biggest squad I can remember for 11 years. In my view, the problem is that Arsenal lacks quality in attack and that's it.
Arsenal's defensive problems are exaggerated by the failure of the attack to score goals when they have chances or to score goals at crucial times.
I wrote an article here called "Adebayor benefits from Schevchenko effect at Arsenal". Many people wrote to say Eduardo was not the same as Schevchenko. That was not the point.
The point was that Eduardo moves in the box in such distracting and clever ways for defenders like Scheva that it allowed Adebayor to score more just like it did for Drogba. It allowed Adebayor to get the kind of chances that he could not miss.
Nobody missed Rosicky or van Persie a lot when they were injured because Eduardo could cover and Adebayor could score. When Eduardo's leg was broken, all of a sudden it became painfully clear just how multiple injuries in the same area can affect a team. Adebayor stopped scoring and we had all kinds of issues with getting width into the team.
This Arsenal team has a poor attacking force. Partly due to multiple long term injuries ?i.e. no partnerships have been able to form and partly because the attack doesn't get the best out of the midfield.
When Thierry Henry was at Arsenal or indeed when any good striker is in a team, you start noticing that everyone tries to find them even when they are in impossible situations. This is because strikers train their midfielders.
If a striker makes a good run whenever a midfielder has the ball, they will learn to pass to him immediately and quickly and even blindly in assumption that he is making the run. Robert P甏es and Dennis Bergkamp used to pass the ball where they knew someone would be without even looking because P甏es, Freddie Ljungberg, Patrick Vieira and Henry were all making runs.
Arsenal's new strikers run into midfield instead. It has made Alexander Hleb, Mathieu Flamini and Francesc Fabregas poorer at killer passes. The new strikers have trained the midfield to be bad at making decisive passing.
The direct effect is that Adebayor has to rely a lot on his touch in crowded areas (something he is not good at) and the second effect is that the midfielders cannot see those players like Nicklas Bendtner and Eduardo when they do make good runs.
In fact Hleb hardly looks up further than 10 yards when he has the ball. Everyone who gets the ball hardly has the chance to create anything with it because it tends to arrive a little late and therefore in a crowded area. Theo Walcott created an easy chance in a non-crowded area at Anfield. That was a collectors' item this season, not only because of the play but because it was nearly unprecedented to see so many Arsenal players in space.
If Arsenal's attack was as efficient as Manchester United, Chelsea or Liverpool's in terms of chances to goal ratio, we would be miles ahead.
There are 2 things you need from each player. First is that they know what to do in each situation ?i.e. they can make a good decision in each situation ?and secondly that they have the courage and quality to execute that decision. If one measures Arsenal players on these two key characteristics, we don't come out so bad but we are not as good as the competition.
Fabregas, Ga螔 Clichy, Flamini, Bacary Sagna, William Gallas, Rosicky, Eduardo, Bendtner, Denilson and Walcott are the only players in my view who know what to do and have the quality to do it (or at least they always try to do what is right rather than bottle it). Problem is that 3 of them are not in the first team, another 2 have been out for a long time, none of the rest are forwards and Arsenal went into these crucial games with only 2.5 of them since Flamini limped off at Anfield.
These players above are the kinds of players you want in your team. They are the players you want in big matches. They are more direct, will try to do the right thing every time, even if it fails but they will not fail more than they succeed because they have quality. Torres could have passed the ball out of the situation surrounded by 3 Arsenal players but he decided to make the keeper work. It was the right thing to do; he knew it could have been saved or deflected out but he did what was right.
Walcott could have easily tried to pass the ball sideways at Anfield because knew it was so tight he could lose it and cause a Liverpool counter-attack. But he knew we had to score, we had to go forward, it was the right thing to do so he went for it ?he took responsibility. He could have lost the ball but he did what was right.
You then have the players that have the quality to execute everything they want but don't seem to always know how to make the best decision (they never seem to do the right thing all the time). Hleb and van Persie fall into that category. Abou Diaby is here too but he will get out of this place and join the top group next season I hope.
When Hleb miscontrolled the ball in the final minutes of the Liverpool league game, people bemoaned the lost chance thinking Hleb would have scored had he controlled the ball better. Nonsense, he was never going to score.
He knew the best thing to do was shoot first time but he knew it could go to row Z or get deflected, he feared he would miss so he tried to control it and cut back (pass the buck to someone else) and that's why he lost it. He feared the right thing so he did the wrong thing.
Then finally there are those players who neither have enough quality to do all they want nor do they have the capability to make a good decision all the time. Adebayor, Ebou?and Gilberto suffer from both in severe quantities. Kolo Tour? Alexander Song and Philippe Senderos suffer more from one than the other and their inconsistencies are usually down to lapses of concentration than lack of skill.
If one is going to do well, a team needs to be drilled to make the right choices and follow them up. I don't believe Ashley Cole is better than Clichy (if Clichy played with P甏es and Henry ?he would do as good). I don't believe Lauren is better than Sagna. I don't think Vieira and Gilberto and so much better than Fabregas and Flamini. But what was different in the old team was that they all made good choices and had the courage to go for it. They made runs and their team mates looked for them. They never bottled it, they tried and failed sometimes. They did things early ?made up their minds early and went for it.
I have never requested a big money signing at Arsenal because I don't believe collecting players is what competition is about. Arsenal fans love the football the team plays and logic says that good football delivers results. We have to realise that this season, football has not really delivered results for us. Crucial goals have been scored from corners and scrambles to give us 2-1 or 1-0 wins. Basically, this season football has delivered us chances ?dozens of chances that have gone unexploited and graft has delivered narrow results.
This is not to say we should throw away football and turn into a Mourinho style team, what it tells us is that we should get the right players convert the chances so that we can deliver results from the way we want to play. Most of the players mentioned who have both key characteristics are still very young. Right now, they are just getting frustrated by the lack of reward for their work. We need to get someone to finish their work off.
I don't think it matters much that Arsenal are na鴳e at the back sometimes. That Senderos lost Hyppia and that Tour?forgot Babel or that Clichy made a bad pass at Birmingham. All of that is small stuff ?it happens to good defences.
It only becomes big and significant when we miss so many chances that we have to rely so heavily on clean sheets and a whole season of zero mistakes at the back ?that is unrealistic. Arsenal under Wenger is never going to be a clean sheets team just like United is not a clean sheets team. What Arsenal should be and the only way it works under Wenger is to be a high-scoring team.
We need some very serious forwards ?they invariably cost a lot but we can afford it. We need those to get us showcasing our football while supporting it with results and trophies. The money we lose by going out early in the Champions League, not winning the league and the effect it has on players like Fabregas is a lot more compared to the cost of a player like Eto'o or Torres. The annoying thing is that those players would probably prefer to play at Arsenal than Liverpool and their contribution would be much bigger at Arsenal because they would have twice as many chances to score.
Our squad is definitely not too small. But we need those players who are good at decisions and executions to be on the first team and we need the rest as squad players. Most importantly, we need to buy one or two deadly finishers no matter how boring they are. We can afford to have one boring player in an exciting team if it rewards our work. After all, most teams have 8 or more boring players.
So to Old Trafford Sunday. I don't know van Persie since he has been out for so long during his Arsenal career that I really cannot be sure how good he really is. Sagna is missing and Senderos can have a really good day or a very bad one.
When Flamini and Sagna are missing then we're as good as a mid-table team. Mid-table teams have beaten United this season but they cannot afford to let Chelsea catch them or start a downward run now with the Champions League semi-finals in sight so it will be tougher on Arsenal than ever. I would play Song instead of Gilberto; put Walcott and Bendtner on and let them go for it.
[ 本帖最後由 pinball 於 2009-1-27 20:00 編輯 ]
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在線雷達
發表於 2008-4-13 19:52:15
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