Short-sightedness can be cured… but foolishness like Franny Jeffers exhibits is incurable.

Gallas coming back is good news, but he’s not without his defensive blunders either. I’m starting to feel that Toure always has a thought in the back of his head that he’s always got to back up his partner as well as make attacking runs down the middle like he’s been told to do by Wenger. At this rate i think his nerves are gonna get frazzled if Gallas/Senderos don’t start improving fast & then we’ll have 2 uncertain CB’s in the line instead of just the one. If that wasn’t enough the uncertainty about the quality of our goalkeeping must be weighing on Toure’s mind as well. Remember the Spurs match on the weekend? Almunia had a decent game until he came out of his box waaaay to early to face off one on one against Berbatov & it was only coz Toure was back tracking early that he caught Berbatov with a great tackle.

Its shit like this that’s gonna make Toure really over-worked & nerve-wracked & that’s no way for a Defender to be.

I don’t know about you guys, but during the Sevilla game i noticed that Fabregas was defending deep a lot of the time during the first half, passing it up to the wings & letting Clichy & Sagna make the quick runs down the sides & then towards the latter stages of the game he interchanged with Flamini who pretty much acted in Gilberto’s position. All this tells me that Wenger knows that there is still a huge problem in defence & his tactics of getting defenders to make regular attacking runs are gonna flounder if he can’t depend on them to do their original jobs as well.

At this rate our team is almost gonna have to look like a team that plays complete & ‘Total Football’. I don’t know if the players are up for that kind of thing. Its just going to open up a whole can of worms in terms of injuries where players are overworked to the point of exhaustion. Flamini is a case in point. The guy has to be all over the park to win the ball & then defend deep in crunch time as well. Wanna take bets on how long it will be before he gets injured too?

To me Flamini getting injured is a bigger cause for worry than Rosicky, Hleb, Gallas or even RVP. Its Flamini that’s been the bulldog for our team uptil now. He’s come into his own since the start of this season & you can see he’s been given the tough job of taking possession of the ball back for Arsenal in difficult situations.

The other worry is Fabregas. The guy has played every minute of every game this season & he’s the main reason we’re in serious contention for titles so early on. To ask him to rotate in & out of a defensive position is (in my mind) a recipe for disaster.

To sum up, if we don’t nix our defensive problems in the bud we’re gonna magnify our own problems for later in the season when it really hots up & we lose important players for the African Nations Cup in January. We gotta get a stable partner for Toure & we’ve got to lock down who’s gonna be regular 1st choice for goalkeeper coz that shit is still a major concern.

if you don’t know what i’m talking about then youtube arsenal crossbar challenge.

I still want to see RVP scoring in the Premiership. A player of his quality cannot go so long without scoring goals in that competition. I don’t know if its a confidence thing or what, but he needs to turn into the match winner we will soon need against the tougher teams in the EPL & the CL. So far Fabregas has been that man but RVP needs to step up too.

My biggest worry is always gonna be the defence now. Looking at it its still way too shaky. Sagna & Clichy are fantastic but Toure is all by himself in the centre without any stable partner backing him up, & we still have no decent back-up plan in event of injuries . Despite having done well i’m still not sure of Almunia. Can he be consistent for a whole season? Still a lot of gambles to make & a lot of choices up in the air. That’s exactly what worries me & keeps me awake at night!

EVDS
Brown, Rio, Vidic, Evra
Ronaldo, Carrick, Scholes, Nani
Giggs
Rooney

Surprised, a bit, but I feel that Saha and Tevez are getting the time to be at full strength for the Chelsea game.