Arsenal need loan help

Tuesday, 03/01/2012

by Richard Leighton, Shoot's Arsenal blogger

It’s been an up and down festive period for Arsenal fans, starting off well with victory at Villa Park but ending on the sourest of notes thanks to defeat away to Fulham.

We have taken seven points from the last four games which I think officially comes under the category of a blip, particularly after the run of game we put together over the last two months.

Our biggest problem at the moment is the lack of any recognised full backs, which is killing us, and the situation is worsening because players are playing out of position and getting injured or sent off because of it.

Bacary Sagna, Carl Jenkinson, Santos, Kieran Kibbs, Thomas Vermaelen and Johann Djourou make up the list of absent full backs/absent emergency full backs at the moment.

It’s incredible and Arsène Wenger must get someone in on loan before a ridiculous situation becomes farcical.

For a team like ours, not having good attacking full backs is a big miss as six goals in six games tells you.

Defensively, shifting a centre back out there will only get you so far with Koscielny and Djourou having mixed bag shall we say.

Onto the Fulham game, and although we conceded both goals in the dying minutes, we actually lost it in the first half thanks to wastefulness in the final third.

Theo Walcott put on a master class in how not to delivery a final ball, make bad decisions in front of goal and misplace passes. How he wasn’t hauled off earlier I don’t know.

Gervinho meanwhile, demonstrated his ability to shoot poorly and miss the target. He was a million miles better than the guy on our other flank who was impersonating a professional footballer for the night.

There have been stories about Walcott’s contract demands being in the region of £85,000 per week and we are stalling on it.

People have been defending Theo by pointing to all the assists he gets for van Persie. What about everyone else? Could it be that the Dutchman is good enough to convert his substandard passes?

Am I being overly harsh? Maybe, but I certainly don’t think Theo has done enough to warrant a whacking great pay rise either.

It’s hard not to be critical of the second half at Fulham and I do try to retain some perspective.

Which is why I will end on the silver lining that is, at the time of writing, we are still just a solitary point off fourth and there’s a long way to go.

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