Wojciech Szczesny has promised that Arsenal will be stronger at the back this season and believes that Steve Bould’s influence will pay dividends.
Despite Arsene Wenger stating publicly that his side looked defensively fragile and have a lot of work to do after Sunday’s draw with Kitchee FC, the Pole, who was making his first Gunners appearance since his disappointing Euro 2012, insists that progress is being made on the training ground.
“We’re strong offensively and and [assistant manager] Steve Bould has been doing some fantastic work with the defence. That seems to be working very well,” explained Szczesny. “It all makes me believe we’ll be that little bit stronger.
“We’ve done a lot of [defensive] shape work in training, work on when we lose the ball and a lot of defending on crosses.
“It’s all very sharp as well. Steve likes to shout at players and keep them on their toes – so it’s looking positive.”
Accepting that a repeat of the 49 goals conceded in the Premier League last term (a record in the Wenger era) is unacceptable, the Pole stressed that the team as a whole will do their utmost to improve the situation.
“I don’t think we can concede more goals than we did last year. I was the one in goal, I was the one who conceded all those goals, and I’m just disappointed because it shows our defending was a big problem for us last season.
“We’ll do everything we can to make it better.”
*Arseblog News scans finger down fixture list, spots away fixture at Old Trafford in November, pokes finger repeatedly at said fixture, remembers a bad day last August and dreams of a possible clean sheet *
Can we please have Steve Bould in shorts this season?
Hey not so fast, pat is returning as scout, he’l need them.
Boots and shinguards too!! Especially when we visit the Shittania
Errrr No, Bould was born errrrr sorry to say that but Stoke *I feel dirty just saying it*. And we bought him from Errrr Stoke *feeling dirty is not bad after all*.
Hope Bouldy’s getting stuck into the whole team on their defensive responsibilities.
It’s too easy to blame the back four alone, but we have to defend better as a team, from the front backwards.
I definitely agree with that. I thought we regularly left our back four vulnerable, particularly to counter attacks. It won’t happen overnight, but hopefully Bould’s defensive work and the experience gained from last season will make the difference.
I always used to be of that opinion, fans tend to not like joining the dots, not enough goals is purely down to the strikers, like United fans and their seemingly lukewarm reaction to having a classy young striker like Welbeck when if he got anything like the service from midfield united used to provide he’d be on 25+. Thing is though, when a team is breaking on us 1 on 2, or 2 on 3 in our favour or even 3 on 3 and regularly breaking through you have to look at the defence and ask questions, even when… Read more »
Agree to a point, and not absolving the defence at all of blame (witness Gibbs standing on halfway for Norwich’s 3rd goal or TV5 wandering/slipping in some games). But as Fatgooner says below, when you’ve an opposition player running his bollocks off to get on the end of a ball in our area, we need a forward or midfielder doing likewise – not just ambling along. That, or someone taking a leaf out of Gilberto Silva’s book – and he was the absolute master at this – and ‘accidentally’ stepping across someone high up the pitch, to stop a counter… Read more »
His drive and determination to be the best has to be appreciated.
Wojech, it wasnt just our defending that was a problem the goalkeeping could also be better.
yer, he states in this article “I was the one in goal conceding all the goals” so I think he knows.
I’m pretty sure he said that himself…. In fact; “I was the one in goal, I was the one who conceded all those goals, and I’m just disappointed because it shows our defending was a big problem for us last season.” So you’ve just repeated what he already said but in a way to essentially have a dig at him
i thought he played pretty well last season, he made a lot of great saves.
without those saves it would have been 100 goals conceded, it wasnt his fault that our team left him exposed on so many occasions
Oh so you’re pointing out his job. So don’t you act like it something out of the ordinary.
Goalkeeping is defending – especially where set pieces are concerned.
“Arseblog News scans finger down fixture list, spots away fixture at Old Trafford in November, pokes finger repeatedly at said fixture, remembers a bad day last August and dreams of a possible clean sheet *………”
Assuming United don’t go bankrupt till then. 🙂
If we are going to do anything this season then it is absolutely vital that we sort out our defending. Not just the back four but the entire team. Some of the defending last season was a complete joke. I don’t want to see midfielders jogging back as we are being overrun in a counter-attack. Or strikers not picking up in their own area when we are defending set-pieces. Hopefully Bouldy will be getting stuck into these lot and making sure they know what’s expected of them. Forty-nine goals conceded in the PL just isn’t acceptable. And ETID is dead… Read more »
Yeah I found it hard to forgive for that norwich goal that just slid past him but we still qualified so all was forgiven.
But it was also his first full season. First being the key word here.
He always wants to get better and that’s all I can ask for really. This first season syndrome I hope ends with him. I want our new signings (giroud, poldi) to hit the ground running. No discussions!.
the reason Szcz is popular (as far as I can tell) is the shouty, don’t-fuck-with-me confidence he brings – presumably because it’s such a refreshing contrast to the rabbit-in-the-headlights indecision that poor old Manuel was reduced to. Whilst this is good it’d be stupid to ignore the fact that we shipped more goals with the positive, ballsy keeper than we did with the one who did more for the sale of brown trousers than the 1970s. Perhaps it’s because this confidence lulls the midfield and forwards into thinking they don’t have to bother? Who the fuck knows? Hopefully Stevie Bould… Read more »
49 goals last season?
BRING BACK ALMUNIA!
Just kidding. Good luck to you at Watford and I forgive you for breaking my heart more often than any girl in the world.
Mmm. Would be lovely to see a bit more defensively. If we can sort the defence out, kill off games when we are ahead and gain a lot more clean sheets, I think we’re in business. Our attack seems fairly competent and we won’t often have a problem with scoring, whether we’re playing with our disgruntled Dutchman up front or not.
Wish there were a few more pre-season friendlies to watch… made my day sat in front of this computer go by a lot quicker.
Can Arsenal do a good defensive job unlike the one we saw last season?…………..¯\(ツ)/¯
Let’s just wait and see.
I love that cute little graphic thing you do. Can I try it?
Okay, here goes:
Let me see you raise your hands, and wave them like you just don’t care…
¯\(ツ)/¯
Hell yeah! Can I get a whoop whoop!!!
Haha, nailed it.
A positive change. I remember seeing an article in the MIrror last year about how we didn’t train more than a few hours each week in defence, and then only the defenders. While anything from the Mirror should be taken with a ton of salt, you have to wonder why they would start writing that kind of BS if no one would read it. E.g. Barcelona only does a few hours of passing training each week. No one would buy that.
more than anything, the forward line need to hold the ball better to ease pressure off the defence which are not the best in the land.
with walcott (lack of skills/minds) and vP (lack of physical strength) were liable to losing the ball.
I hear something like this every year
I’ll wait and see before making any judgements
“Steve Bould has been doing some fantastic work with the defence. That seems to be working very well”
well, having just seen us concede soft goals and our defence be easily carved open by minnows like kitchee and malaysia, and i’m not too sure about the “seems to be working well part”.
it looked to me like it was exactly the same problems
we need to make this our priority number one for every training session
and i’m not too sure about the “seems to be working well part”.
it looked to me like it was exactly the same problems
===
So true. I haven’t seen anything so far in pre-season to suggest there’s been any difference in how we defend. It’s still shit. Hopefully, we’ll see the impact when he starts working with our first-choice defenders?
Well, preseason so far has left a lot to be desired defensively. I suppose it’s better to be shipping the goals before the season starts to pick out how to fix the errors before they count for something. I’m sure with Koscielny and Mertesacker back in the mix we’ll look a different side. Would be great if we can start with the same intensity of 2009-10 when we smashed Everton 6-1. That was one of the best performances I’ve seen from Arsenal in recent years. If we can pressurize like that and keep it up for the season we’ll be… Read more »
News for the sake of news! Let’s wait and see!
Enjoyed the last part very much though! #pokesfingerrepeatedly
The 8 goals at OT and 4 away to blackburn really messed up our stats. Any big team can have 2 or 3 upsets in a year. However we can’t afford to concede more than 30 goals in my opinion if we want to challenge for the title. The thing that annoyed me the most was that Arsenal conceded the most goals due to individual errors and to the oppositions first and second attempts on goal. I hate the pattern of us dominating, having 8-10 attempts, then conceding. It must be fixed.
I might need 7amkickoff to confirm this, but by my recollection we didnt concede as many goals from corners/freekicks last year as we did in previous seasons – which was clearly our main defensive weakness in seasons past. That suggests our back four improved that side of their game – it was runners not being tracked from deep that was our main issue last year. Not to absolve mistakes that our defence made last year, but I think its clear that the problems defensively come from further up the pitch (ie walcott not using his pace to harry upfield, midfield… Read more »
TV5 was poor last season sure he will be back and lethal. Must be given the captaincy.
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Hopefully Sagna will get back healthy soon and we’ll have our preferred back 4 for Bould to mold with the BFG paying close attention.
In Arsenal related news, Almunia signed with Watford.
Oh dear confirms what I thought about Zzzzzzzzzzzzola – he’s never gonna get them promoted with the Moony between the styx!!
just watch that video of Sagna, Podolski and BFG in dance move in Nigeria!
God it was hilarious, got to say I was amazed that BFG has some other talent apart from football!
Does anyone know if Steve Bould was good defensively with the reserve squad?
We (just) need to start our season well. First few games will be very important and though.