This is an important point that is worth making and then making again. For all the piss and vinegar being directed to Trent, and as indefensible his Rashfordesque effort was in responding to the turnover on the first, he really played no role in us conceding the second.
Prior to the move that the goal came from United had a period of nothing possession, knocking the ball around in front of us and ultimately going all the way back to their CBs. Martinez then pumped an aimless long ball that Ibou stepped over to deal with. His momentum took him a bit wider than ideal so Trent stepped inside to cover him. Everything was absolutely fine until then. From there it looked like Ibou tried to pick out Gravenberch with his header but misplaced it and gave it straight to Bruno. Bruno then gave a simple pass to Garnacho who had Ibou isolated on the right, beat him and picked out Amad with his cross who got infront of Robbo (for the second time in a week) to score.
Acknowledging Trent had a bad game with several moments of shitness in both execution and effort, criticisms of him on this goal are off based, and seemingly being used as a crutch to cover for things other more favoured players should have done better.
There are those reacting to it being Ibou who was beaten out wide as if he was having to do Trent’s defending for him, with the unstated accusation that Trent is off galivanting forward and not wanting to put the effort to get back. When in reality Trent defended exactly as he should have done in dropping in to cover the center in response to Ibou being pulled out wide and leaving them temporarily switched.
Yeah, but we were giving the ball away too often and that is why United had possession in the first place. Yes we were, and Trent was generally culpable for that, but not on this goal. The last sequnce of possession we had we lost it because Gravcy misshit a short pass to him you would expect him to make 100 times out of 100. Trent stepped into a pocket in midfield to receive a pass, but Gravy somehow hit it behind him allowing Garnacho to get back and nick it. That is a position Trent routinely takes up, is one that is clearly part of Slot’s game plan wanting us to get the ball to feet behind the first line of the attack’s press. But even then if you want to argue Trent was being too cavalier, it was still about a minute and 2 different phases of play in which we were completely reset defensively before they worked the ball out to Garnacho out wide.
Lost in all of this is the question of whether the attacking sub Slot made after the equalizer was really needed or whether the Harvey sub that restored 3 men to the midfield should have been made while 2-1 up. Or should we have responded to Ibou starting to look leggy in the 10 mins or so before they scored and made a change then to make sure he had more support.
We were excellent defensively up to the Real Madrid game. A real unit was emerging and everyone was fighting hard.
With the game gone and almost over, that fat arsed primadona, Endrick, flung himself at Konate and injured him, and Bradley pulled a hamstring too.
Arsenal go on an on about their injuries, but in addition to the above, we’ve also managed injuries to Robbo and Tsimikas, and of course Alisson has missed a lot of football so far too. This is just the defence!
It looks like more of the group is coming back into contention, in particular Konate and Bradley, and I fully expect us to tighten up defensively again.
It’s a fair comment that it has gone off the boil though.
In addition, it will be interesting to see how we strengthen the defence moving forward. Related to that will be who leaves.
Are teams just converting their chances better than they were earlier in the season or is there a deeper lying issue in the chances we’re giving up?
Arne was persistent in his post match interviews from the very beginning and emphasised how we needed Ali/Kelleher multiple times to preserve our clean sheets.
And that is inclusive of Alisson dicking about and giving them a nearly open goal.
Seems whenever we lose a game some.of us have to build a narrative about how bad we were. We weren’t at our best but we generally had the game under control, then they hit us with a good counter punch while we were down to 10 men.
That today was one of the worst defence/goalkeeper performance from us that I’ve seen in a long time. The amount of individual mistakes… regardless of one player out of position.
It’s time that this defence gets a few new injections of quality and competition (even if Trent would stay). That’s not even in question.
You’d think Kelleher would be more commanding in his box and that he would save the third goal on his good day. That said, literally every member of the back four made a terrible mistake that led to a great chance, with only the one from Konate not being punished. Injection of quality is needed throughout the squad, so I expect a centre back and a left back to be signed this summer, with hopefully more rotation for Van Dijk and Konate.
If we’re being harsh then Kelleher could’ve done better with the 3rd and I’m not too sure he was great from a positional sense on the first either…look like he hesitated to fully get across, maybe I’m doing the finish by Sessgnon some injustice.
Our biggest problem defensively, as has been the case for 2 years now, has been at fullback. How easily exposed we’ve been, how easily we allow crosses in from wide, that’s before we get into the individual errors. If it were up to me Bradley and Kostas would start all the remaining games.
One thought I had is that a lot of PL team are moving to having big, bulky, powerful CFs now and we don’t really have that. Nunez is theoretically but he really is more of a runner than a bully.
In training our defenders never see that style of player, never practice against it. Maybe we need someone who fits that profile both because its effective and because our players need to know how to play against it.
