Why Arsenal Proved Again They Won't Win Any Trophy For A While

Arsenal's Defense Not Scary Anymore

Arsenal lost against a league two side Bradford.
We were taken all the way by Championship side Brighton Hove & Albion, conceding 2 goals in the process.

I can't remember when we last kept a clean sheet..can you.

Where am I going with this?

Our defense is no longer mean. It seems like ages ago that we had a mean defense and teams would be scared of our defenses. They knew it would be tough to score against Arsenal and more than that, they knew that they would get hassled and kicked throughout the the 90 minutes. Team were genuinely scared of the presence of Martin Keown, Sol Cambell and Patrick Viera. They were the enforcers,leaders,commanders... whatever you want call them. I don't think I need to tell everyone that we won when these players were in our side and when they left, we never won anything....zero....zilch...absolutely nothing at all. You don't need to know rocket science to know that we need such players in the side to win trophies do we?

THE TEAM THAT CONCEDES THE LEAST GOALS WINS IN THE END. This is a golden rule that applies to all winning teams. We need to look no further than last season when Manchester City won the league on goal difference because they conceded less than they scored compared to Manchester United.

The most sickening part of all this is that even after 8 years since the last of our "commanders", Patrick Viera left, there has been not a single player who has come in and claimed to have come close to replicating them. Many compared Diaby to Viera but just because they look alike does not mean they have the same presence. Who would be scared of seeing Diaby in the team sheet?

We keep conceding goals against every side and cannot keep a clean sheet at all. The manager says that as long as we keep scoring more than we concede, he is happy with this team. But until and unless we are capable of keeping clean sheets with the use of some "commanders", 8 years will soon be 16years.

THE AFTERMATH

I still feel drowsy from watching the late night match between Barcelona and Seville last night.What a match it was!Barcelona came back fro 2-1 down to defeat Seville 3-2 in the dying moments of the match.How I wished Arsenal could achieve the same feat earlier in the evening.But bygones are bygones.It is a new day and we have to move on.No use in complaining about "what could have been" or "what should have been."

So what position are we after yesterday's defeat?We are at 7th with 9 points.Chelsea are of course 1st with 16 points.Already, the gap is of 7 points!Second placed Everton(surprise!) are at 13 points. No need for us to panic just yet.Chelsea will eventually drop points.The table is not as much a concern to me as the Arsenal squad is at the moment.We lost "glass-ankled" Diaby yesterday.A pity really, he could have given so much to  our team.But it is evident that he is too injury-prone to be playing or for that matter staying at Arsenal in my opinion.Van Persie too was injury prone,he played at least 15-20 games per season.

Another concern for me is that the players looked so down at the final whistle yesterday.The media and the fans alike, before the match predicted the first loss of the season for Chelsea, which might have raised expectations in our players that they could(or maybe would) win the match.But, they were to be disappointed at the end of the day.This might also have had a negative effect on some of our players who seemed so confident before the match.I wonder if this will have longer impacts on our play?I hope it does not and hope the players will pick themselves up after the defeat.

After the match, Arsene said about the missed chance by Giroud at the death, "He should have scored." Well Giroud has been a total flop for me so far.I don't think the manager thinks he is a hit too.He did not start the last too match,did he?And not counting the minor chances,he missed two very important chances, one against Stoke to win the match and the one against Chelsea yesterday that would have given us a point.
Arsene does not and has not criticized his players in the past.But in case of Giroud, it seems even Le Boss is finding it hard to keep quite!Yet,I hope Giroud does well although I am not sure this season will be a season to remember for him in all honesty.