From Alexander Tovey : Communication: FAIL!
I was at the game on Saturday, sitting in the Clock End lower, so far away from the goal that we conceded.
Your summary of the game is pretty accurate but misses one thing of note.
Not only did we concede to an error involving the centre backs, but we gave away another three or four chances in the minutes afterwards. Simple balls between the two centre backs seemed to confuse the hell out of them both.
Fabianski made up for this more than once.
It was only in the second half that I could really see why. Usually I am in the orange quadrant, upper tier, so I miss the little nuances of the players.
Saturday was different as I was some 50 metres closer.
My conclusion from being closer is that Squillaci really cannot defend. His heading isn’t bad but he truly has no positional sense whatsoever.
He wanders, often on Saturday to the point of confusing Djourou. He also keeps his mouth shut and while silently pointing aimlessly with a flicked-wrist fired from the waist. It looked like a good impression of a Tourettes sufferer trying to contain the ticks, with nothing but a small twitch on show.
I remember joining my new Sunday League team and being a bit shy to shout too much. I didn’t know anyone in the side and didn’t want to make an ass out of myself. I overcame this by week two, as I am an adult and not a five year old child.
The distasteful yet understandable joke around me was that Kos’s injury looked serious, meaning that Wenger may be forced to buy someone in the January window.
Our best Centreback pairing at the moment could conceivably be Vermaelen and Djourou. Neither French imports have much of a clue.
Fabianski had a fair game, with mistakes being infrequent. I did think though that Fabianski cannot rely on his centre backs to make clearance headers, especially from corners, which must make the decision whether to come for the ball or not even more difficult. He should have gone mental at his two centre backs for repeatedly exposing him. Instead he vented his anger only at the ball boy for returning the ball too quickly during the closing minutes.
This showed me that the players have the same sense of panic when we are only one goal to the good.
Everyone in the stadium is on edge, given that we seem unable to defend against ordinary strikers when we stop scoring ourselves.
And yet oddly we are top.
Overall it was typical Arsenal. We could have been 5-0 up in the first 20 minutes or 1-3 down by half time. 2-1 was a fair result.