Have Arsenal finally ended their defensive woes?

Centre-back

Last season was something of an anomaly for us in terms of centre-backs, as we had Laurent Koscielny and Johan Djourou as our first choice centre-backs following the season-long injury to ‘The Verminator’ and the abysmal form of Sebastien Squillaci.

So to make it simple, I’m going to compare our centre-back pairing of Koscielny and Vermaelen to last seasons of Koscielny and Djourou, as well as taking into consideration any back-ups that we have.

So let’s begin with Koscielny. Since the incident in the Carling Cup final last year, The Frenchman has been nothing short of brilliant for us. He has pace, an amazing sense of positional awareness, is good in the air and can grab the occasional goal at times. Comparing him now to what we saw at the beginning of last season, the difference is remarkable. Arsene Wenger really found a gem in Koscielny. I rate him so highly that I would truthfully say that as a defender, he is a better than Vermaelen.

However, Vermaelen is a natural organizer, has one of the best attitudes in our team, can finish as well as most Premier League strikers and is our most important defender simply because of his leadership. Why I love this player so much is because of his never say die attitude. Take the Fulham game for example, he was not down that he scored an unfortunate own goal, no, he simply got up, dusted himself of and scored at the other end. A lot of players in our team can learn a lot from his attitude, it is truly remarkable.

In terms of back-ups, last year we had Squillaci and Ignasi Miquel, this season we have those two as well as Djourou and Per Mertesacker, and I think that the latter two could be a Premier League centre-back pairing on its own (don’t start with the hate on Djourou, he was by far our best centre-back last year). Clear improvement in the central part of our back-line.

Left-back

Arguably the chink in our defensive armour. I recently wrote an article highlighting the good and bad points of both of our current left-backs, eventually saying that I thought Kieran Gibbs should be our first choice one, because he is more defensively solid than Andre Santos. This is a view that I maintain, however, while I think Gibbs has tons of potential, I also agree with the view some fans share, that is that he is not quite there yet. I don’t know whether this means we should give him a baptism of fire so too speak, by playing him in a ‘sink or swim’ test, which worked miracles for Alex Song, or we should gently introduce him into the first-team, but either way, which ever left-back is playing at the moment, it is considerably noticed that this area is the weakest part of our defence.

This is not to say we are any worse of than we were last season, as we haven’t had a defensively stable left-back since Cashley left us for Chelsea.

I think we’re just about as good on the left as we have been since Cole left. But with the massive potential that Gibbs has, this could soon be addressed.

So with two improvements and two ‘just as goods’, I feel that a large part of our unbeaten run is down to the gelling of the new look Arsenal defence.

For the first time in quite a few seasons we have a back-line which is comparable to pretty much every team in the league. Our defence should be praised and given credit for their efforts, and this is a big reason why we are currently on a seven game unbeaten run. Best thing is, they’re only going to get better as time goes by!

Visit and Join our Facebook page, click HERE to do so.

Gunnersphere is currently looking for new writers to join the squad. Contact via twitter or at Gunnersphere@snack-media.com for further details.