Bold Tone wrote:
Bold Tone wrote:
I wish you were right but i don't think 2 CBs automatically make our defence better than theirs.
Our FB's are really poor defensively too.
Also their midfield is far superior so even if we fix the defence we would be kidding ourselves if we believed we were comfortably better than them. I remember the odd game when our midfield looked good but, for the most part, the lack of a functioning DM has hamstrung us. Even Watford, an average team, dominated our midfield for 80mins with 10 men as Deeney had been sent off.
You called this hyperbole but didn't think the "two centrebacks away from being comfortably better than them" was?
As for not mentioning players, the names are interchangeable and i could insert Guendouzi, AMN and Kolasinac to make the same point.
Torreira is a good player but one guy doesn't make our midfield comfortably better than a Spurs midfield that was one of the few that went toe to toe with Man City, Ajax and Liverpool last season.
Also if i'm not mistaken, you are the one who introduced Ndombele into the discussion so it's strange to dismiss my reply.
We were also discussing the midfield as a unit so Ndombele elevates the team in a much different way to Eriksen who they are trying to replace by with players like Lo Celso and Ceballos who hopefully turns them down.
Fair enough; Dules was overstating things (you've exposed my current myopia in terms of only seeing Arsenal fans overstating rivals and underplaying Arsenal), but I don't agree with the implication that they're hugely superior. It's a close run thing, and as the results last season shows, they're not a particularly good or well balanced team. 21 games is an absurd amount of games to lose, and to lose more than a third of Premier League games is truly dire.
As for their midfield "going toe-to-toe" with City, Liverpool and Ajax; that's not something I agree with. Their midfield was a real weakess all season for them, and a positive result in a match doesn't equate to an even battle in midifeld. In the two legs against Ajax, for example, Ajax completely dominated the midfield, but Spurs made a good decision to literally cut out their midfield completely and hit Llorente with long ball after long ball.
The whole point of the conversation is what adding two quality centrebacks would do to our team, I think it would make us a much better team relative to last season, and players like Guendouzi, Torreira and even Xhaka would be viewed more favourably as a result.
Relative to Tottenham last season we scored more, lost less, but conceded more. You say because they finished a point ahead that trumps everything but I think it's reasonable to expect we would have won more points if we hadn't lost our best centreback and best fullback in Holding and Bellerin to ACL injuries halfway through the season: and that matters when comparing the relative stengths of each squad in the here and now. It is relevant.
Having two players in your back four that are as prone to error and stupidity as Mustafi and Kolasinac is an impossible situation for any team. Those two out and two solid players in their place alone would make a huge difference and make us a much better team in my opinion.
