They struggled defensively, that's nothing new. If anything it's usually exasperated by Yaya.

Mine still works, kinda 😆

Rex wrote:

Man City coped well without Agüero, but they are struggling big time without Yaya. If they don't find an answer, fast, then we may as well hand Chelsea the PL trophy in a fortnight's time.

TBH I don't give a frakk if CFC do beat then and open up a title winning gap on the rest of the league.
My caveats to that are that we reduce that deficit by 3 points in our return fixture & we lay claim to finish 2nd,
rather than this retain top4 BS.

It is interesting that Wenger has chosen a defender for this years panic buy in the race for the Prize.
Could this be a very late conversion on to road to Damascus for him that its defending that actually wins games cups and titles, not attacking midfielders.

He has talked about us signing a defender in January since mid October, so it is a bit rich to call Gabriel a panic buy. It is also not very difficult to figure out why we are shopping for defenders now.

It is pretty difficult to figure out why we didn't buy one last summer though to be honest.

Nah, that one is easy; it is because we have Wenger as our manager, and he has not once in his reign here had a proper squad without glaring holes in it. Even during the glory days we had some atrocious players getting games for us.

How can anyone write a piece about the lack of strong, organising defenders and not bring up Barzagli? He's the epitome of that player type.

That is a cop out.

The likes of Mathieu, Lovren, Vermaelen, Rojo, and heck, even our own Chambers went for 15M+ in the summer. Quite telling for the CB market.

Rex has a point though regarding Wenger being Wenger, and leaving us short. Could we have signed Gabriel last summer? Hard to know.

While I am loathe to add any more mere decent players to our squad it is just plain stupidity to go into a season with 2 CBs, a left back who has never played in the middle as 3rd choice CB (who is also our back-up LB), and a 19 year old raw kid as 4th choice CB ( who has never played in the middle and who is also our back-up RB).
We needed at least one more able body in there, and saying there was no one to be found is a cop out.

My theory is that we would have signed him last summer but for the injury to Giroud and the last minute need to sign a striker.
Wenger wrongly assumed that we'd make do til January with two CB and CB cover from full backs.
He hadn't reckoned on Debuchy getting injured though he must have known Kos was in a bit of a state post World Cup.

My theory is that he was completely bowled over by Nacho "Nacho Monreal" Monreal's pre season performances at centre back

My theory is that Wenger is a gambler who always gambles with squad depth.

My theory is that it would kill Chambers and Bellerin.

I'd rather bet on someone inexperienced but brilliant like Bellerin than someone who's experienced and pointless. The big problem is that we don't have many potentially brilliant players waiting in the fringes. We have a couple who are somewhat promising but constantly injured and a few others who are just pointless. I would have killed to have a squad full of the likes of Chambers and Bellerin.

Don't be silly Klaus, there is no such thing as experienced and pointless.
Sick of boy geniuses sick of "potential" I want results and I wanted them 5 years ago.