I’ve been reading about how Lee Dixon proposes to beat Stoke’s long throw tactic which was our downfall on Saturday.

Dixon's proposal (Courtesy of the BBC)

We all saw how effective Delap was at putting in low, fast throws right into the box. Personally I was pooing myself everytime Stoke got a throw, and I’m sure all of you were too. (Stoke highlights here).

Lee has come up with a tactic based on what the team under George Graham might have done, in the old days when Arsenal had the tightest defence.

He proposes putting 4 men on the goal line, and telling them to attack the ball, that way they won’t be jumping from a standing position. They also will be able to watch the trajectory of the ball rather than the man they are marking.

This seems very clever and it would work, but we have already played Stoke and already lost. I was shocked that Wenger hadn’t put some more work into defence before this game, because against Stoke’s muscle and long throws we didn’t look too strong.

I don’t think Wenger would ever go for such a radical tactic though, he is pretty conservative about tactics, and generally goes for the idea that if we can out pass the opposition we will win. This is great but in deadball situations this doesn’t work.

I think Wenger should rethink our defensive tactics because at the moment we are struggling to keep a clean sheet, and we have conceded a lot of goals during the past 3 seasons.

Hopefully rumours that we are bringing in Keown as a coach are true, because he might be able to bring back some old style Arsenal defending!

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