Joe Fitzpatrick 
What will you all do with your lives after Arsenal win a Premier League and Champions League double? What will you all be saying to each other after Arsene Wenger raises the top two trophies high above his head, knocks them both together, looks out triumphantly at the crowd full of his worst critics and doubters and screams "I WAS right all along and you were ALL wrong! Ha ha, in your faces! O Ye of little faith!" I do not know about the rest of you Gooners but I am simply going to do the sensible thing and save the game, switch off the Playstation and get back to reality.
It is my firmly held and honest opinion that until Arsene Wenger can get his squad to start fighting and defending like champions then all of our collective hopes and dreams of silverware are only going to be realised in the virtual realms of Championship Manager and Pro Evolution Soccer video games. As our annual end of season collapse rumbled ever onwards and downwards with our recent defeat at Bolton, I was left wondering just how much longer can Arsene Wenger and his coaching staff continue to put out sides that concede more goals than all of their main rivals and for the penny to finally drop and Wenger to realise that conceding an average of more than a goal a game means we are never going to see Arsenal win another major trophy under him.
This season, Arsenal have conceded 36 goals in 35 league games which makes them equal with Fulham, who also have conceded 36 goals in 35 league games. Under Arsene Wenger, Arsenal have now officially gone from being lauded as the best defensive side in the country under George Graham to having the same defensive quality of Fulham F.C. (who currently sit in 9th place but were 14th prior to last weekend’s fixtures). It could even be argued that Fulham actually have better defenders and goalkeepers than Arsenal currently do because Fulham do not keep the ball nearly as well as our beloved Arsenal which means that their defence is constantly under even more pressure than our joke of a defence is.
Arsenal have gone backwards defensively under Arsene Wenger and if you are one of the few people reading this and thinking, "Now that can't be true, can it?" then you should consider the fact that Arsenal conceded only 31 goals in the whole of the 2007/08 season and still finished 4 points behind Manchester United, who conceded only 22 goals that season. All of the great managers in the history of the game have known that defending is, indeed, half of the beautiful game (and therefore cannot be ignored) and that a top goalkeeper or centre half should be treated with the same respect as a fantastic winger or sublime centre forward.
When the great Brian Clough was asked which position was the most important on a football pitch he responded, "Centre-forwards, centre-halves and goalkeepers, in that order, or reverse order." Being a prolific goalscorer himself in his playing days, Clough obviously had a bias in favour of the centre forward position but even he recognised the supreme importance of the defensive unit and he even went on to say, "I've never fathomed why top keepers don't cost as much as top strikers. A save can be as important as a goal but a mistake by a keeper is often more costly than a miss by his team mate at the other end of the field." Brian Clough realised that you had to build a successful team by starting from the very back and every successful manager since him (including Wenger himself at one time) has pretty much realised the same thing; so, why oh why then does modern day Wenger seem to think he can get away with neglecting what is essentially 50% of the game?
Now, Arsene Wenger seems only to see defending as the ugly side of ‘The Beautiful Game’. He clearly believes that it should not be worried about too much because of his naively held belief that his team will always - without fail - score at least one more goal than the opposition will manage. Well, Arsene, when you concede an average of more than a goal a game then you are asking an awful lot of your offensive players aren't you? He is effectively telling his players that they better score at least two goals if they want to win a game because, we are all expecting, I repeat, WE ARE ALL EXPECTING the team to concede at some point during the game. Maybe I am a being a little bit nostalgic but when I watched Graham's Famous Back Five, I did not expect them to concede a goal and when they did, it was – almost without fail – a goal deservedly earned by the opposition rather than gifted to them by our own players.
Ian Wright might have scored all of our goals at one time but even his exploits in front of goal were eclipsed by the unbelievable heroics of the defensive unit behind him. When Wrighty put us in front you could bet both your house and your children's inheritance that Adams & Co were not going to throw the game away; it was going to take something very special or lucky to beat them. Under Wenger, we throw games away from winning positions and it is all starting to remind me of Kevin Keegan and his gung-ho all out attacking style of football that never did - and never will win - trophies because it leaves you far too exposed at the back. Keegan held the same naive belief as Wenger now holds that conceding goals does not matter as long as your team scores more than the opposition, therefore, breeding a culture wherein conceding a goal is not seen as the cardinal sin that a Graham, Clough, Ferguson or Mourinho would see it as.
Maybe our poor defending would not be highlighted so much if we were actually the best goalscoring side in the Premier league but we are not; Manchester united are. Manchester United have scored 4 more goals than us this season but have conceded four goals less than us in the process of doing so. Last seasons champions, Chelsea, scored 103 goals and conceded 32 and this is the level that Arsenal should be aiming for. Although this season, Chelsea and Manchester United may have not reached the dizzy heights of previous seasons, we would be naive to think that they will not both be back even stronger next season with the likes of Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham following hot on their heels. If Arsene really wants to insist on winning the league by purely outscoring the opposition maybe he should think about signing a proven goalscorer to compliment the injury prone Van Persie and score 25 goals a season, otherwise, he will surely have to bite the bullet and get a few top class defenders in?
Then again, maybe, I am just bloody ungrateful and should be pleased that we have the same defensive record as Fulham,; our top goalscorer has only 15 league goals so far; and our manager is correctly described as "tactically naive" by Sam Allardyce... of all the great managers out there on Planet Football.
Maybe I should just remember that I have never worked even half a day in football in my life and should get back to playing my silly little video games but then again, if even I can see the problems with this team then why can't Arsene Wenger or is he so confused by greed and hungry for our money that he refuses to acknowledge the truth?
The truth, Arsene, is that Eboue, Denilson, Almunia, Diaby, Fabianski, Bendtner, Ro-sicky (sorry Tom,) Squillaci and the lazy, unmotivated, overpaid Arshavin are not fit to wear the shirt of Arsenal F.C; that the team is sent out to play in the same formation and with same ‘tactics’ every single game, which has become way too predictable and we are rubbish at the back and lack a 25 goal a season striker.
