From John : Everton 2 Arsenal 1
Is Mustafi more important to Arsenal than Sanchez?
Terrible way to end a good run, Walcott, anonymous, Chamberlain, ineffective.
These guys can play, but just don’t show up every week.
Two people who do are Sanchez and Mustafi, and I wonder how the results would shake down if Sanchez rather than Mustafi had been out for 3 weeks?
Get well soon Shkodran!
From Nigel : Defending
Hi Myles,
Season’s greetings to you and the family.
Know what you mean about defending crosses…always seems to be our Achilles heel.
However, I do believe that the goal against Everton was the first headed goal from a corner that we’ve conceded this season.
On zonal marking, it gets a lot of bad press due to the number of goals which are attributed to being conceded due to it.
However, a few months ago I heard Martin Keown and Glenn Hoddle discussing it and Keown was saying that the George Graham back 4 always used zonal marking.
Clearly they did it very well. He is still an advocate of the system and believes the issue isn’t the system but the application of it. I also seem to recall that Arsenal under Wenger only started using zonal marking a few years ago…when Steve Bould became his assistant. Perhaps he has more of an influence on the defence than we realise, including for some of the areas which are perceived as weaknesses.
From Lauris: Zonal marking
“Zonal marking sucks but is a vital element of Lord Wenger’s philosophy”
1st goal conceded from a corner this season. Sucks indeed.