Our Away form

We know by now how bad it is. But I am struggling to understand why it is so bad all of a sudden? We have had shitter squads who used to win comfortably away from home.

You can argue teams now are better than they used to be but it doesn't make sense that we are the only 'big' club to suddenly start struggling against them. Back in the days losing to Hull or losing to Blackburn would be considered a shock result. Now it's expected. No one feels confident going to even places like Bournemouth or Watford.

Is it the tactics? Are we not setting ourselves properly on the counter? Does it all come down to not having a DM?

Or is it the deteriorating coaching of said players?

We are by no means a great team but it is quite worrying how bad it is getting now. If it wasn't for our home form, we would be finishing 8th or 9th.

arsenal have the same problems as Liverpool nobody fears them. all teams know they have a great chance to score goals against them so every game is a hard fought game. imo city are not great at the back but teams are now scared of them and don't put them under pressure. with arsenal and Liverpool teams can be 3-0 down but still believe they have a chance. in football a great defense is king imo.

too many mental midgets

One reason. We are too predictable. Simple. Everyone knows how to beat us. Good organization. Press midfield. Deep line. Clog the center, Let us attack from wide (we cant cross) and play a physical centre back to out-muscle the striker if by chance a cross is accurate. Win headers in our box (we cant head either) and second balls on set-pieces to score.

But they do that on our home matches too and sometimes we win.

I didn't read the article but our away form is crap because our defence can't handle pressure. Most teams that come to the Emirates don't attack us or pressure us, they sit back and hope to score from a counter attack but that's exactly what makes Arsenal good.

Away though, teams are braver and are not afraid to pressure us which is when our defence crumbles.

Basically anyone can beat us if they just decide to attack rather than defend deep, even at the Emirates but most managers don't have the balls to do it.

17/18 away table



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18/19 away

Common factor?

The players

-poor/unreliable defenders
-questionable technical/Physical ability of midfield(to resist pressure or not getting bullied)
-limited Physical ability of attackers (to get away from defenders and push them back)

My theory is that the weak defence makes the players nervous so they don't play their natural games. Compounding that issue is the other team sensing that we're not quite at it and becoming more aggressive, which only makes us more nervous. It's not so much an issue at home because it's rare for teams to show attacking ambition against us, even when we aren't playing well. So we can have more touches of the ball and get our shit together.

It's not just individuals, though they certainly play their part. It's hard to have a solid defence when there are so many unreliable players back there; where even the most reliable of the bunch, Koscielny and Sokratis, are still prone to rash moments. These guys are high energy defenders who revel in physicality and last-ditch tackles, which is great when everything is working, but not so much when they're not on it. Our defence wasn't amazing with him, but Mertesacker's calm was an important quality that we've yet to replace. At the moment, there are too many defenders in that team who shit the bed at the first sign of trouble.

Of course, defending is a team effort and I wonder about certain players' application when the going gets tough. He's an easy target, but Ozil is notorious for switching off when a game isn't going well. I don't know why he does it, but he's just the type who gets frustrated and stops playing when the team isn't playing well. Guendouzi is still immature and gets too caught up in the flow of the game. Like today we really needed him to be sitting and covering counters but he was nowhere to be seen. XHAKA's kinda the same even though he's way more experienced. Then you get guys like Mkhitaryan, Ramsey or Iwobi who go into "try everything" mode where their decision making goes down the toilet. It looks good because they're getting on the ball but the composure isn't there.

Balance is a big problem too. Emery said today that we didn't have balance in either half, and in a lot of games this season we've struggled to find a good balance between attack and defence. I wonder if a lot of that is down to having so many inconsistent and weirdly specialist players, which prevents us from picking a single style and perfecting it. We can't be a possession-heavy team because we don't have enough intelligent players but we can't be a counter-attacking team either because too many of our attackers have bad decision making and weak defensive work-rate. So we're constantly overcommitting to one style and ending up gung-ho and vulnerable or too defensive with no attacking threat.

Away record
Last season W7 D4 L8 +/-[31-35]
This season W1 D2 L3 +/-[5-9]

And this time home record wont keep us in top 4 race either
actually worse than 17/18