Julien Laurens discussed Arsenal’s defensive issues on ESPN FC following their north London derby defeat on Sunday. Despite taking the lead through Alexandre Lacazette after 16 minutes, Mikel Arteta’s side ended up leaving empty-handed after some poor defending allowed their rivals to equalise almost immediately before going on to win the game with just nine minutes of normal time remaining (as per BBC Sport).
Having seen the Gunners surrender their lead, Laurens was very critical of the back three in particular and stressed that despite William Saliba being due to join up with the first-team squad before the start of the 2020/21 campaign, the club will need to strengthen further in the defensive positions this summer. Here is what he had to say:
“We thought that maybe the back three, or the back five, when the two wing-backs are a bit deeper, could help them and it certainly looked like it in previous games. Although we saw [Shkodran] Mustafi being back to his worst against Leicester with that mistake at the end that cost them the [Jamie] Vardy goal.
“Kolasinac never really recovered from that mistake [v Spurs] too, and then you’ve got David Luiz who is okay in this role as a sweeper, but if the two other centre-backs in the team are not really good, then he struggles and suffers as well.
“They will have to really strengthen that department in the summer, Saliba is coming from France, he is very good but he is very young as well. So who else do you sign? Because you will have to sign someone else, there is just no doubt about it.”
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TIF Thoughts…
David Luiz and Sead Kolasinac have been Arsenal’s 19th and 23rd best performers in the Premier League this season, respectively, and these two players made up two-thirds of the back three that started at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium which suggests the club’s defenders haven’t performed to a high enough standard all season. Mustafi, the third player, who was also mentioned by Laurens has a much superior performance rating of 6.94/10 and is the Gunners’ fifth highest-rated performer in the Premier League this season according to WhoScored.
It’s clear from what the French football journalist had to say, that even after the arrival of Saliba, who the club have paid £27m for, he believes they will still be lacking quality in the defensive positions, a view that we would struggle to disagree with.