In the end, Arsenal, the team with no defence, beat the team with no attack, Eintracht Frankfurt. But it was a close-run thing. Arsenal eventually scored two late goals, securing a 3-0 win in their Europa League opener. They continued to demonstrate that the days of ‘Boring, Boring Arsenal’ and ‘One Nil To The Arsenal’ are long gone. Eintracht could easily have won the game themselves and would have done so but for dreadful finishing.
Arsenal Defence Woes Are Exposed Even in Victory
Both Eintracht and Arsenal are Weaker Than Last Season
The first match in Group F confirmed everything about the relative status of the Europa League compared to the Champions League. It featured two of the four best teams from last season’s competition; Eintracht lost on penalties in the semi-final to Chelsea, who in turn thrashed Arsenal in the final. However, if Arsenal and Eintracht really are among the front-runners to win the competition this season, then heaven help the other sides because they must be dreadful. There were numerous mistakes by both teams. This included a plethora of missed chances by Eintracht and the only player on either side who really looked like an elite player was Pierre-Emerick Aubambeyang, who scored Arsenal’s third goal.
On the evidence of this game, both Arsenal and Eintracht are weaker this season than last. They were already fairly weak, at least relative to the other major teams competing in this season’s competition. Eintracht, of course, had to sell the ‘triple threat’ of attackers – Luka Jovic, Sebastian Haller and Ante Rebic – that did so much to get them to the Europa League last four. The wastefulness of their replacements last night, especially Dutch striker Bas Dost, showed that they are nowhere near as deadly. Quite frankly, if they cannot score against Arsenal, who can they score against?
Similarly, Arsenal appear to be even weaker defensively this season than they were last season, which is really saying something. Arsenal had already looked defensively shambolic in the Premier League. This is, in part, due to letting their two best defenders of the last decade, Laurent Koscielny and Nacho Monreal, leave during the summer. David Luiz and Sead Kolasinac replaced them in the first team and these players are both far better at going forward than they are at doing their primary job of defending. That was particularly apparent in their last game against Watford. They threw away a two-goal lead to draw and really should have lost.
Arsenal’s Second-String Defenders Are Second-Rate
Unfortunately, the second-string defenders brought in against Eintracht did little to suggest that they are the solution to Arsenal’s long-term defensive weakness. Although Calum Chambers began his career at Southampton as a full-back, he has rarely played there since and that was very apparent against Eintracht, in both his poor positioning defensively and his inability to assist the attack by producing good crosses into the box.
Similarly, although Shkodran Mustafi was for once part of a defence that kept a clean sheet, he himself did little to contribute to that achievement. Early in the second half, with the score 1-0 to Arsenal, he was caught out hopelessly by a cross into the box. Either Dost or André Silva could have easily headed in an equaliser, but Dost somehow missed the target completely.
A Long Wait for a New First-Choice Defence
All Arsenal fans can really hope for is their hoped-for first choice defence. This consists of Hector Bellerin, Rob Holding, Kieran Tierney and William Saliba. They can bring some long-term defensive stability to the side, but it will only be in the long term as the first three are currently unavailable. Saliba will not join Arsenal officially until next season. In the meantime, the current crop of first and second-choice defenders – Luiz, Sokratis, Kolasinac, Maitland-Niles, Mustafi and Chambers – collectively look like the worst set of defenders that Arsenal have assembled in their modern history.
Arsenal got away with it against Eintracht. They will not be so lucky as to face a team that has a weakened strikeforce every week. Their next two games should be winnable. They face Aston Villa in the Premier League and Nottingham Forest in the Carabao Cup. However, all true Arsenal fans know that with the current defence no game is genuinely a gimme.
The real fear is that, after those two home games, Arsenal travel to Manchester United. For all of United’s own woes, they possess in Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial and Mason Greenwood an abundance of the fast and usually clinical strikers who should absolutely feast on a defence as supine – indeed, as essentially useless – as Arsenal’s. The Gunners have not won away at Old Trafford for nearly a decade and a half and there is absolutely no reason to be optimistic that they can end that appalling run this season.
Why Buy a Winger and Not Defenders?
Ultimately, it remains the biggest of footballing mysteries as to why the Arsenal hierarchy in general and head coach Unai Emery, in particular, have not done more to try and shore up Arsenal at the back. As the two late goals from Bukayo Saka and Aubameyang showed, Arsenal have the attacking capability to trouble anyone. However, they also have a defence that can concede against anyone and that almost certainly will concede (and more than once) against a team with a strong forward line.
In his brief cameo at the end of the Eintracht game, Nicolas Pepe again showed little to demonstrate that he is worth anywhere near the £70 million-plus club-record transfer fee that Arsenal paid for him in the summer. The fact that Saka, his supposed understudy, scored a beautiful goal only emphasises Pepe’s inadequacy. He has got nowhere near scoring or even providing an assist himself.
Arsenal invested enormously on a winger rather than a much-needed defender. As a result, this Pepe transfer could go down as one of the worst of all time. To spend a fortune on the fittings when there are no foundations is as damaging for a football team as it is for a house. Right now Arsenal still look as if the roof is going to cave in on them at any moment.
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