Our defence

[vlahka]

Reina isnt doing enough awesome saves like most keepers. I'm never comfortable. Our defense might be semi useless but the opposition teams never get that many shots. When they do they seem to go in.

[Warren]

Reina isnt doing enough awesome saves like most keepers. I'm never comfortable. Our defense might be semi useless but the opposition teams never get that many shots. When they do they seem to go in.

Yeah Reina is **** isn't he if only he made more awesome saves and our defence isn't just having a blip after a great season they are **** too

[Shaggy]

It is a salient point. Teams DO seem to punish the **** out of us. We don't concede many goalscoring opportunities at all but we do concede far too many goals proportionately.

[ntto]

365 saying Reina has escaped any culpability for their 3rd goal which went under him.

we have looked really shakey at the back in recent games

[DeeTheDog]

I don't think last night can be used to back up this rather flimsy claim, three goals were conceded through individual errors. Mascherano, is a world class defensive midfielder, yet dwelled on the ball and we conceded. We needed a win and pushed forward at every opportunity trying to win the the game, the pace was frentic and Aresenal with little pressure took almost every opportunity that came their way.

[barnes10]

our whole defence - including reina- has been making uncharacteristic mistakes.

thats what's cost us this time round. earlier with the draws it was not taking chances. now we're scoring hatfuls, the defence can't cope.

shyte

[Neil Young]

365 saying Reina has escaped any culpability for their 3rd goal which went under him.

I don't think you can reasonably blame Reina - Arshavin was about 10 yards out and his shot was low.

[dww]

A big problem at times this season has been that only Carragher and Reina take responsibility for organisation at the back. If either has an off day the whole defense seems to crumble. Agger is slightly worse in this regard than Skrtel in my view.

Yesterday in particular we seemed to have too much faith in people covering behind and to be too willing to take chances with the ball. I think we often have too much faith in the system for offside as well. People often seem to stop and claim when there is an opportunity to make a block which partially explains why we have such a high goal to chance/shot ratio.

[Neil Young]

On second thoughts...

[red g]

its a balance, everyone complained that we were getting lucky 1 nil ones and we weret offensive enough.....now we seem to have it correct up front but poor at the back. I am sure rafa will get it right nxt year........he got the defence right to start with, got the attack right now......just need to put the 2 togther

[SK]

Yeah, I'm pissed off and bumping this thread to be a cunt.

Just too gutted for words.

well at least you can't blame Škrtel for this one...

[vlahka]

Yeah Reina is **** isn't he if only he made more awesome saves and our defence isn't just having a blip after a great season they are **** too

I forgot about the rule that says do not say anything remotely negative about a player. Doesnt change the fact that teams generally dont have many chances against us yet most on target seem to go in. Not saying he's ****. Saying that sometimes he's made to look better than he is because the defense stops the balls getting near him. Whether awesome keeper or not I still get scared as **** everytime we have a corner against us. If the defenders dont get to the ball first its usually straight in.

[Neil Young]

I forgot about the rule that says do not say anything remotely negative about a player. Doesnt change the fact that teams generally dont have many chances against us yet most on target seem to go in. Not saying he's ****. Saying that sometimes he's made to look better than he is because the defense stops the balls getting near him. Whether awesome keeper or not I still get scared as **** everytime we have a corner against us. If the defenders dont get to the ball first its usually straight in.

Perhaps Reina has been told not come for the ball because teams often block off keepers these days. So it might not be any different with a different keeper. I think you're seeing what you 'want' to see.

Do you remember what it was like watching us when James was our keeper? That really was frightening. I feel a lot more reassured by Reina.

[vlahka]

Compared to the James of old, I'd feel more safer with carragher in goal.

[JohnDoe]

is the worst defence in the league.

No team concedes so many goals from so little possession from the opposition.

No defence concedes the amount of goals we do from set pieces.

No team is so uncomfortable defending when they enjoy so much breathing space when you compare them to West Brom or Newcastle.

Food for thought.

Is this now a widely acceptable claim?

I just couldn't help remembering about starting this thread and I don't like starting new threads about the same topics which is what I was going to do.

In my opinion:

1. Our central defence, which mainly consisted of Carragher and Skrtel, has always been fargile and until this season, been protected by more defensive minded full backs and two defensive midfielders who were sat deep, which isn't the case now. We've been carrying them to clean sheets.

2. We've always been nervous in set pieces, and once we started to concede a few from them, the confidence in the system was shattered and I doubt it's going to recover. We concede nearly an average of a goal every game from a set piece, which is shocking.

3. We have no clue how to defend when carrying the initiative, in other words, we don't know how to defend like a top team, yet have fewer problems when facing a side of equal strength and as a result have less possession.