Stoke Preview: What to Change?

I'm still not completely over the horrible draw with Sp*rs on Wednesday, but the season must roll on. I'm tempted to say here that this will have been a wake up call and will have taught the team some lessons. But I'm just not sure this is the case. We have had now four results this season which should have been "wake-up calls" but the team don't seemed to have learned from any of them. Arsene Wenger was talking in circles after the match about how maturity isn't linked to experience or something like that but either way I don't think even he knew what he was saying. He was angry and upset like the rest of us but unlike us he has to give constructive interviews right after the match and can't sound like he's panicking.

But hopefully he is. There is a clear lack of defensiveness and maturity in the squad right now. I don't necessarily think we need boatloads of new players with experience. I just think our defense needs some serious coaching. I love Arsene Wenger to bits but he simply does not know how to teach a team how to defend. He is an attack minded manager and thus that is how the team play. Our attacks are most often beautiful and breathtaking, but that has to be backed up with an equally strong defense.

I hate to compare us with Manchester United, but look at their squad last season. They could attack with ferocity and score 3 or 4 goals at will. But then they also had an excellent defense; one that was keeping out the goals with superb skill and then distributing the ball to the attacking players to let them rip apart opposing defenses. And what did Man U do? They won the title. If you don't like the Man U comparison how about the invincibles? The breathtaking attacking play was there for all to see but equally as important was the back line. Cambell and Toure, Lauren and Cole, and the decent backups all had a defensive steel. They would throw themselves at the ball and defend with their life. They were big and strong and able to cover for each other. The defense itself was feared in the Premiership, never mind the attack.

But Arsene Wenger's back lines have either been inherited (such as the Adams-Keown days) or trained by those same experienced players (the Invinvibles defense). Now the experienced players are gone from the dressing room and a new defense has been built, the first built exclusively by Arsene Wenger. And it has failed miserably. Whilst Arsene has built perhaps the best ever squad at passing the ball he simply does not know how to train a defense. This isn't a criticism it's a fact. And bringing in new defenders isn't necessarily going to solve the problem (see Silvestre as an example: good experienced defender, but he hasn't changed the way the whole defense plays). We need to bring in a specialist. We need a person like Matin Keown who can come in and be the defense coach. We need this coach to work with Arsene Wenger and convince the Boss to let him teach the defense how to play and then worry about integrating that with the rest of the team.

I think we could definitely use a new Centre Half, but that won't solve the problem. I think it's back to basics time for our defense. They need a new coach (not manager) and a new way of defending. If we can get that and not be too far off the lead when it happens then we can still make a push for the title. But at the moment we won't be winning anything with our defense.

How does this relate to Stoke? We are away and as weak as Stoke are we may end up conceding one or two goals and have to fight hard for the win. We can, and I believe will win, but only our attacking play will save us. Can someone please teach this team how to defend?

Fab 4