From the newsletter this morning

Ok so, most people would agree that Vermaelen is a better defender than Toure, and that a DM protecting the back four is better than no bugger doing it. But we've now conceded 13 goals in 9 games. Even with my rudimentary maths that's about 1.5 goals a game vs last year of about 1 in 1.

Therefore to actually improve we'd need to concede no more than 23 goals in the last 29 Prem games.

Can you see it happening? Do you think we will see a significant improvement in our defence as the players get used to the system?

I can't, frankly. I think our best bet to reduce the GA tally is when our better mf's come back and we control the oppo with possesion in midfield.

I dont think we will. The keeper situation is making things slightly worse.

The plus side this season is that we are scoring more goals per game, so hopefully if we stop arsing about thinking weve won in the first 10 mins and keep banging the goals in, we'll be fine.

We'll concede just as many if not more than last season.

Not sure, we really were awful at times last season...in the game against Liverpool it really was amateurish. Spurs 4-4 was another shambolic display.

I think the defence is still the achilles heel, but replacing Toure with Vermaelen has at least improved it in some respect, having said that even we all know we can ship leads with the bat of an eyelid so who knows.

Just may be, maybe Toure was not the problem? May be the real liability should have been sold? JM is very good at managing his defence and not conceding goals. May be there was a reason why he never preferred Gallas as CB but rather LB?


Hmmm.... go figure.

Toure was a problem, he couldn't head, would get caught out of position and his defending was pretty shoddy at times.

Fantastic in the unbeaten season, but then he did have one of the best defenders in the world alongside him as well as a terrific agressive midfield to protect him.

You gotta call it how you see it and from what I saw his performances dating back about 2-3 years had been very disappointing, admired his effort but sometimes that's just not enough.

Toure was a problem, but so are our fullbacks and our goalie at the moment

it's depressing

Replacing Toure with Vermaelen was a good thing but the problem is not just the CB's its the midfield closing down and not allowing the ball to get into our box in the first place

Full-backs, keeper and the pressing isn't good enough. CBs are fine.

Yes. That's the irony of the whole situation, the CB's have been by far the best two players this season. Dealt with everything they've needed to comfortably.

The reason we're conceeding goals is due to individual mistakes, brought on by lack of focus, concentration, experience, and in some cases sheer stupidity (I'm looking at you Diaby).

The full backs are very slack at the moment, in reality they deserve to be dropped but we don't really have adequate replacements.

Eboue is good going forward but has absolutely no end product, his defending isn't the best either from what I remember, don't think he's displined enough.

The keeper is a problem as we know, we should just bite the bullet and sign someone good, I see Fergie has been linked with Lopes recently...Van der Sar is still pretty decent but is getting on a bit...but maybe he's already planning his replacement seeing as Foster hasn't been great. AW shows too much faith when he should just go out and bring in what's necessary sometimes.

If it kills the other 3 keepers so be it. ;)

The midfield haven't worked hard enough since early season, the new work ethic disappeared pretty quickly.

:haha:

I don't entirely trust those stats tbh. Firstly we're not that far into the season so it's not a great indicator of where we're going ot be overall. Secondly we should bear in mind our run of conceding very few but scoring just as little last season, improving the qualiy of our defence might not necessarily result in conceding fewer goals but it will end up with better results.

:goodpost:

Also 2 penalties a number of goalkeeping errors and some individual mistakes corrupt the rusults, take those away and we have the best defence in the league

Good logic :lol:

I wouldn't go that far but it's certainly better than the stats suggest and certainly better than it was.

It'd be nice but scoring is what win games

:haha:

:lol:

:lol:

That's your best post ever.

We might concede fewer. We might not.

Most important thing is at the other end tbh

We will see no difference whatsoever. What we see when sides put balls into our box, is panic and error strewn attempts to clear. Unforced errors. The personnel is pretty much the same, no lessons learnt in 3 years, cannot see this miraculously changing in the next 6 months.

Defence isn't as bigger problem as it's made out to be. The defence isn't that bad (albeit it may be if either CB got injured) no worse than any other top side.

The problem is quite simply the team crumbles mentally when certain common situations go against them. The quality AW bangs on about most - "mental strength" is probably our poorest trait - maybe that's exactly why he says what he does.

Any goal a team concedes is a result of bad defending somewhere but if you analyse the games where we've tossed points away - Tottenham, West Ham, they're rarely through kamikaze defending, showboating etc - just simple lack of composure & confidence when the opposition get an upper hand.

can't we just bring back adams, winterburn, keown, Seaman and dixon? :unsure:

:goodpost:

We only conceded 17 league goals in the 98/99 season with them in defence.

Wonder what we won that season...

So much for defence being the be all and end all of a trophy winning team.

Defence is fine.

Sort out the real problem

I think we'll concede less.

we've been a fair bit better than both Liverpool and the chavs on set pieces so far this season :good:


like others have said recently, it's not really a defensive problem per se, nor is it a problem putting away chances (per Cripps) -- what underlies it all is, for lack of a better term, a weak mentality. Sometimes that shows up in conceding goals, sometimes it shows up in losing possession, sometimes it shows up in fluffing chances.

It goes through the entire team bar a few like Arshavin and Eduardo and Rosicky and maybe Tommy V. But it's also noticeable that I've just named the players who have played the least amount of games for us in the last few years. So maybe they just haven't had their chance to screw up yet. (Actually Eduardo had some massive blunders when he was trying to play defense or a wing position. So that leaves three.)

We also scored the most in 03 and 05 but still didn't win the league.

Attack is fine.

Sort out the real problem.

We will concede more goals this season no question, really cant see us keeping 30+ clean sheets :coffee:

But how much more did we score than the 2nd highest scoring team?

If its just a few more, means f all.

98/99, we conceded around 20 less than the Mancs.

Won f all. What did they win?

A good defence helps of course but they wont win you titles.

You can win titles with shit defences. Just look at Reals last 2 title wins.

Wont win f all if we dont have a killer instinct

In 2003, we scored 85 to United's 74. They conceded 34 to our 42.

In 2005, we scored 87 to Chelsea's 72. They conceded 15 to our 36.

Says it all, I'm afraid.

Anyway in direct reference to those two seasons, we never had any trouble scoring goals; it really was the defence that did us in. In 03 when the wheels came off, the goals were still going in IIRC, the issue was that we started throwing away games with sloppiness and defensive incompetence. Likewise in 05 we scored for fun all year round but defended woefully and that cost us.

Goals win games. Clean sheet guarantees you a point. As said by Andy Gray i think, if we have a half decent defence which we do, we'll do well as long as we had a Torres or a Drogba at the other end which we dont.

Would rather we played as we are doing with a killer instinct added than change the way we play to get better defensively (cos thats what we'll have to do) and become a Stoke.

This isn't a dichotomy. The point is that we are moreorless okay up front. Over the last few years scoring goals has not been anything like as big a problem as defensive frailties have been. The point is that we need to divert more energy into sorting the defence out than reinforcing the forward line.

Not correct.

07/08, we didnt win the title cos of our failure to finish teams off. Only lost 3 games suggesting defence was fine for the most part but drew far too many suggesting we didnt have what it took to get one more goal.

A few 0-0s cost us that season

Our problems of the last few years have had far more to do with defensive sloppiness (this doesn't just apply to the backline and keeper, but the midfield and closing players down etc) than with our attacking.

You can put 07/08 down to those draws, others might put them down to defensive insecurities (I think it's in the middle, there were 1-1s that cost us that year when we not only failed to put away chances but defended lazily and put ourselves in a position that we shouldn't have been if we were serious about getting the title). In other years, like 02/03 and 04/05, it's been the defensive incompetence that has cost us. The other years we've failed to get near have featured problems at both ends but we've still managed to get quite a few goals but have ended up shipping far too many, and that's what has kept us from the top.

Ergo, I think the defence is a more pressing concern than the attack, but that isn't to say that the forward line cannot be improved and should not be looked at critically :good:

Nah it was coz the defence bottled it in the big games when we took the lead.

Jesus H Christ :yikes: