Written by
Gareth Maher
on Tuesday, 25 March 2008
If Arsenal are to climb back into the title race then
manager Arsene Wenger needs to make tough calls starting with the
dropping of Kolo Toure from their defence.
Only last month The Gunners were five points clear at the top of
the Premier League table, but a run of poor performances now sees
them sit in third place behind Chelsea and Manchester United.
Last weekend's defeat to Chelsea was a crushing blow for the
North Londoners, not only because their city rivals overtook them
in the league but that when the pressure came on in a high pressure
game they simply couldn't cope.
Many people have wrongly pointed to the double substitution by
Blues boss Avram Grant as the turning point in the game, but it was
just coincidence that the Arsenal dam cracked when Nicolas Anelka
and Juliano Belletti trotted onto the pitch.
Chelsea did not change their tactics with those switches,
despite what many reports would have you believe, instead they just
kept launching long balls into Didier Drogba and pushing a nervy
Gunners defence right back into their own penalty area.
Drogba took advantage of poor positioning by William Gallas and
Kolo Toure for both goals that he scored. There was no midfielder
dropping back to help them out, yet they should still be held
accountable for their poor decision-making in those two incidents.
Toure, in particular, was embarrassing in how he tried to defend
the second goal with his wild swing at the ball making Gunners fans
blush every time it is replayed.
Those two goals highlighted the fragile partnership that Gallas
and Toure share in the centre of defence. Both should be suited to
play alongside each other as they are strong, quick, good tacklers,
and committed to clearing their lines at all costs. But it doesn't
work.
Sometimes they are too close together, which invites pressure
from the opposition and sees them challenging for the same ball.
Then at other times they are too far apart and fail to communicate
properly as they are pulled out of position - which was the case
when Tuncay Sanli found Jermaine Aliadiere to score in the 1-1 draw
with Middlesbrough.
Despite not being the complete defender himself, Philippe
Senderos is actually a far more solid partner for Gallas to link up
with. The Swiss centre-back reads the game well, encourages those
around him, marks his man very closely, and is often on hand to
help a fellow defender when they are being doubled up on. It was
obvious that Wenger would drop him once Toure was back to full
fitness, but it was the wrong decision to make.
The difference between Toure and Senderos cannot be judged on
statistics as the Ivory Coast international has clearly played more
games than Senderos. However, it is curious to discover that when
Senderos has started in the league Arsenal have won seven times and
only conceded six goals, while Toure has been involved in fourteen
wins and seen nineteen goals be conceded.
Those stats don't mean much though as the level of opposition
needs to be taken into account, what happened in the particular
games (i.e. if someone was sent off), and neither have an advantage
of helping the team win more as both defenders have scored two
league goals each.
Yet for anyone who watches Arsenal on a regular basis, it will
be blindly obvious that Toure and Gallas does not work as well as
Senderos and Gallas does. Gallas is the mainstay in this equation
because he is the club captain. Toure might be a better individual
player, but Senderos is a far better team player. So Wenger should
go with what works for the team and not just rely on the individual
ability of each player.
Senderos is a player that constantly gets mocked in the media
for being a huge liability, which is born from two poor
performances when he was marking Drogba. However, any defender that
comes up against the Chelsea powerhouse seems to struggle, as Toure
and Gallas both did last week.
Toure left for the African Cup Of Nations, where he was terrible
for Ivory Coast even though they reached the semi-finals, earlier
this year and has not performed well for Arsenal since returning
from that tournament. If a player is not playing well then they
shouldn't be playing - Arsenal learnt that last year with Thierry
Henry, but could be making the same mistake all over again.
With Bacary Sagna limping off in the defeat to Chelsea, Toure
may be asked to fill in at right-back which would see Senderos
restored to the heart of the defence for the next match against
Bolton Wanderers. Unless the volatile and undependable Emmanuel
Eboue is chosen as cover for Sagna, but let's hope that that isn't
the case.
