Mertesacker Is Still Our Top Defender
Back in July I wrote a piece on Mertesacker saying I believed Mertesacker to be our best defender (the definition is important so bear with me) and most disagreed. A few months into the season and things had changed and only the minority didn’t like him. Fast forward to now and we’re back to the majority not liking him. What do you think the odds will be that in a few months time everyone will love him again? I’d be willing to put a few quid down with Betfair Premier League on Per finishing as a top 5 rated centre-back at the end of the season.
Why do some Gooners fluctuate their opinions on a player so drastically? First Giroud was a top signing, then he was the next Chamakh and now he is a top player again (although some will still have you believe he is crap).
I preferred Cahill when we signed Mertesacker and was disappointed we signed Per instead of Gary. I soon came to prefer Per and was glad we signed him instead, and thought he was our best defender. I still think that today. I still think Mertesacker is our best defender. Gibbs and Jenkinson for me have been the stand-out performers but I still think that Mertesacker is our best defender.
I don’t understand the negativity from some supporters toward Mertesacker. You don’t make over 80 appearances for the German national team if you are an average player let alone a poor one. Germany is blessed with great players so to get the level of caps Mertesacker has you need to have a little something special about you.
Mertesacker has been criticised for a lack of pace however I think it unfair to label him a bad defender just because of a lack of pace. When settled at centre-half (and at a similar age to what Per is now) Baresi, Maldini, Cannavaro, Moore, Adams and Bould were not possessors of great pace, they were possessors of great minds. And since when was pace a prerequisite of being a good footballer? I remember when people said Theo couldn’t play football and he was only a professional because he was fast!
Passion
To me, a great defender is a defender who doesn’t need to tackle. Excellent reading of the game, superb positioning and the ability to force the opposition to move into closed space is more important than tackling and pace. Aside from a few individual errors from our back four this season (Mertesacker included) we’ve been generally quite solid and I think Mertesacker has been a huge part of that. I think some of our most shambolic defending has been when he hasn’t played. Koscielny and Vermaelen are fast players and should use (and mostly have) that pace to compliment Per when he plays. Arguably Per and Koscielny or Vermaelen is a better partnership than Koscielny and Vermaelen.
Players are meant to compliment each other so Per being exposed for pace is as much someone else’s fault as it is his. Being slow isn’t an individual error so it should/could be seen as a team weakness not a personal weakness but if the right-back and other centre-back are making up the pace then the weakness is covered and they can benefit from Per’s positioning, marshalling of the defence and defensive leadership.
A great example of players complimenting each other is Kolo Toure and Sol Campbell. I loved Toure, I thought he was a fantastic servant to the club but I have always said that he is an unintelligent defender. Defenders like Kolo have power and pace which is great but they also tend to lack positional awareness and the ability to read the game at speed which is why they miss headers or see balls fly over their heads or get outsmarted by opposition attackers. Players like Kolo need intelligent defenders next to them. Kolo was fantastic for Arsenal because he had Campbell or Keown with him who could marshal him but was average at best when paired with a similar defender and had to rely on speed to protect the goal which didn’t always work. Sol Campbell had the positional sense of Per but also had the pace. Sadly Sol Campbell’s don’t grow on trees and we shouldn’t live in the past anyway.
Not the same without a decent partner
Per a very tidy passer with excellent distribution and he is also a surprisingly tidy tackler for a man of his size. He is rarely clumsy in the tackle and as such has a very low foul per game rate. Another reason he rarely fouls is his reading of the game. Per can’t use his pace to recover from a bad move so he reads the game and he does it extremely well. If you watch him and I mean truly watch him in games you will see that he doesn’t need to fly into tackles or out-muscle other players. He just sets up in the best position to see play develop and casually steps into new positions as the game changes and he senses danger. More often than not this discourages players from attacking into the space he is protecting because they see that, like a great chess master, he has his lines protected and his next three moves thought out. To those caught up in the excitement of the game (which is entirely understandable, we don’t turn up or tune in just to watch one player) these subtle movements can go unnoticed and Per is only acknowledged when he screws up.
However I believe that if we all paid a little more attention to the incredible reading of the game that Per possesses and displays that we could all agree that he could be at the heart of a new back five the famous back five we could be proud of. It won’t be easy and they’ll probably never be as good but if they came a reasonably close second in all time Arsenal defences they’d be the best defence in the league.
The level of composure and elegance that Mertesacker showed in his first season and improvements he has shown this season has filled me with a great belief. I believe he can still improve in the air, which is his weakest area although he has a respectable number of successful defensive headers/headed clearances, and if he does that and continues to display his superb reading and positioning I believe that he will be a big part of a new era of success built on the foundations of steady defence.
Don’t give up on Mertesacker just yet or dismiss him as a bad player because such things have a nasty way of biting you in the arse if they prove you wrong or make you look like a horrible git if you say “I’ve always said he was shit”. 😉
Stay positive and believe in this team. Wenger has done a good job to build a decent core under the radar and to resist buying players for the sake of it. This summer we should be able to build upon our core with quality that takes us to the next level and doesn’t just sustain us.
The new era is coming and I fully expect Mertesacker to be a part of it.
Thanks for reading and let me know if you agree/disagree! Please comment on this post, subscribe by email, share with friends and follow me on twitter (@thedanielcowan).
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Very much agree in your assesment of Mertesacker. However what really disappoints is his lack of strength & speed. His lack of strength allowshim to be beaten easily in collisions & prevents him from asserting his authority in the game when needed to, like the legendary Sol Campbell did. His lack of pace is an issue for obvious reasons.
If he added some strength & improved his speed, he would be a truly World Class defender in my opinion.
Sadly he can’t improve his speed but as I pointed out, it’s not a bad thing and not a huge weakness if covered by the other defenders. Strength wise I think he is okay.
Completely agree i have seen him make tackles nd read the game superbly he marshal his zone like colonel nd make tackles superbly . He has that presence dt calms others.
If you want us to be the best team in England again, then in my opinion Mertesacker is not good enough to be a first choice, he is backup at best.
You have mentioned Baresi, Maldini, Cannavaro, Moore, Adams and Bould they were all defenders who did have ‘incredible reading of the game’ Mertesacker certainly does not. So many times this season he has stepped up to play offside and left someone onside.
I think the lack of pace can be covered, if the player is aggressive, powerful and dominant, or if he reads the game like an Adams, or a Baresi, but Mert doesnt fill either category.
Its not just the lack of pace, its the speed he can move his feet in terms of making blocks, cutting out passes etc.
Yes he has been the best performer of the 3 centre backs this season, but the other 2 have been poor and in the last couple of months so has Mertesacker.
His part in the 2 goals Liverpool scored cant just be brushed aside as errors, that other players make too. They werent errors, they involved a lack of desire to stop a goal. The Suarez one, he could have made an effort to block, would Sol Campbell or Martin Keown,have stood there and let him shoot? No there body would have been put on the line to block that ball.
Then the Henderson one, frankly was embarrassing, all he needed to do was get close, use some sort of body strength, he just stood off and let Henderson waltz past him like he was Messi.
I agree that Koscielny and Vermaelen is not the right partnership either, but I do feel more comfortable when them 2 play to be honest. Personally I would like to see a new dominant centre back come in to partner Vermaelen. Then Kos can backup Vermaelen, and Mertesacker can backup the new centre back.
This is not a case of staying positive, or not believing in the team. We are making progress,but we still need strengthened and this is one area where we need to strengthen.
I disagree that he doesn’t have good reading. I’ve seen him step up up play offside and been let down but his other defenders. That’s their fault not his.
Also, the Liverpool goals were other players fault but Mertesacker is easy to blame. Any player is easy to blame if you don’t like them.
Im not looking for an argument here. Im an Arsenal fan like you and im giving my opinion.
I dont dislike Mertesacker, or any of our players for that matter. Im giving you my opinion on him as a player, simple as that.
I also didnt say he doesnt have good reading of the game, if you read my comments properly. Your words were ‘incredible reading of the game’. and mentioning Baresi, Cannavaro, Adams etc. Well im my opinion Mertesacker does not read the game anywhere near as well as those players, and he doesnt read it incredibly, as he does make quite a few errors of judgement, some1 who reads the game incredibly well does not make them lapses, other than odd times.
At the end of the day we are Arsenal, we are one of the top clubs in the world, so why settle for a good centre back, who has certain weaknesses, when we can go out and get a top rate defender. We need to get back to having great players, and Mertesacker will never be great in my view.
Im not saying he is the only 1 that made errors vs Liverpool or any other team. But you have singled him out, hence im commenting on him.
He is an ok defender, he doesnt have a lot of room for improvement he is pretty much set as a player now. If you want to be 10/15 points behind Man U again next season then yeah Mertesacker will do as first choice. But I want us to be contenders again, and we need better players in the first XI
Why not get in a top top rate defender and then use Mert as a squad player?
Im not convinced by any of the 3 centre backs we have to be honest, its an area that we need to look at, as the mix isnt right
I never said you were arguing. You gave me your opinion and I gave you mine 🙂
If we can get in a better player than Mertesacker I’d happily see him on the bench but as things stand I think he is our best defender (and that’s not to say he’s the best shit in the pot, as I think we have decent players).
It’s worth noting Kev that all of those defenders had moments in their careers when they were doubted and that is why I chose them for comparison. Adams was labelled a donkey for years. I think if you watch Mertesacker closely you’ll appreciate the subtle moves he makes etc. If you already do watch him like a hawk and still think he isn’t a top player then we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Hey Kev, how many games have you watched Baresi, Adams and Cannavaro play?
It’s sad trend, judging and changing the opinion for a player over night. Its frustrating for me to have any proper conversation with Arsenal fan who use such judgment, we have 3 great CB and all of them are unjustified under fire this season. Per had great season, but even he couldnt evade the “not good enough” brigade .
For me Mertesacker is a squad player, not a first choice, and I have had that view since his early displays for the club, and nothing has changed.
Yes he did play well earlier this season, but I still didnt feel comfortable when he played, and dont to this day
It is a sad trend. I like to judge players over time. I personally am not a fan of Gervinho but that opinion has formed over 1.5 seasons. I still hope he proves me wrong because I know he has talent.
You can form an opinion of a player early on, and then they can prove you wrong.
I formed an opinion of Mertesacker that I didnt think he was good enough to be a first choice in a title challenging team, and he has done nothing to prove otherwise.
Gervinho has the talent, he needs to improve his end product. He has room for improvement, I dont see Mertesacker improving enough, he is set as a player now I believe
Yea i agree wit u defenders need to compliment each other dey shuld be different varieties Kosciencly n Vaemalen ar very similar so Mertersacker is the one who compliment them. In some cases this tough tackling defenders ar always out positioned cos they always like to tackle they lack that patient to hold there position, thats wat mertersacker is good at. I for one always though that kosciencly n Vaemalen were our best defenders bt i have come to realise the truth that two similar defenders can be partnered.
I hope you are right. He is a fine defender, who could be excellent for bundesliga/la liga or even serie A, but for premiere league, we can do with someone better.
We can argue all day long on this chapter, yes he has won 70+ german caps but there werent many competitions for the place. lahm wasnt a central defender and Hummels belongs to new generation. What has Germans won in past decades or so?
I dont mean he is bad, but we can have someone better than him in that position to take us to new level. Having said that, I support and cheer everyone who puts on sacred red and white.
And I dont agree he is our best defender, for me its Vermaelen!
Vermaelen is a fanboy choice 😉 he’s a top player but I wouldn’t put him ahead of Koscielny 🙂
I agree with you both. I think Vermaelen is very overrated by the arsenal fanbase. He is the most error prone of the arsenal defenders. When he focusses on defending he is pretty good positionally but losses concentration and has been making some very poor errors. And then he has such a tendency to get forward and lose himself positionally. He seems to be under instructions to stifle this but this seems only to have confused him further. His game has dropped a lot since his first season (but even then his goals made him look way better), especially this year after being made captain…it has not had the impact wenger was looking for. He has become less dominant and less of a leader…
Koscienly IS our best defender. He is as good a reader of the game as per, he has better pace than TV5 and he is by far the best in the air (watch the game against stoke, frequently beating crouch in the air). Kozzer also likes to get forward but he is MUCH better at timing when to go forward than TV5. However, he has been very error prone too this season, but i think a lot of that comes down to consistency. He has not been able to put a string of games together due to injury and i must say a bit of a lack of support from Wenger. He has once or twice made an error costing a goal then been dropped instead of being stood by…And now he is injured again…SH#T!!
Per is a really good reader of the game, but as gooner kev says not incredible. He loses track of attackers and the best attackers know this. He will look away frequently to get position but lose track of who he is marking and gets burned because his acceleration is so poor. If you are slow and have very bad acceleration you MUST not do this. He should be better in the air and i think this comes down to his strength, which he can and should work on. He NEEDS to be stronger especially for such a big man…
As far as tackling goes i think Per is one of the best tacklers in the WORLD. He is technically brilliant in the tackle and his timing is perfect. No question he is an intelligent player.
Overall i think our best partnership is Koz and Merte (right now) cause TV5 is too similar. But the problem is wenger made TV5 captain so koscienly has to suffer and the weaker player starts IMHO.
We need another defender. A great reader of the game, strong player, who is not slow (tough to find…but this would be an improvement on Per). like gooner Kev said these guys are good enough to keep the team around 4th but improvement is needed therefore we need to bring someone in…also we are back to having a depth issue at CB further indicating that we need a CB.
Vermaelen is not a defender , he is more of a DM who likes to go forward and he abandons the defense. Mertesacker is responsible and calm in his game.
By the way, the Bundesliga is a better league than the Premier League now so I’m not sure your argument here can hold.
Also trying to downplay his international experience is really sad, Germany constantly reaching finals and late stages in all top competitions and he played major parts in this. What did your National team won, Nir, if I may ask?
In Mertesacker, We have a top-class CB and we should be proud of that!
Calm down Mate, I dont mean to be offensive. It has nothing to do with my nationality as I am not a player. I do like German national team and it is the fact that they havent won anything of late. Per has been mainstay of the German team for a long time and to really win titles we can have improvement on Per.
Another good blog Daniel. i agree Per is quite good as a central defender perhaps our best central defender thsi season but he seems to have lost form which explains the reasons he had made some schoolboy howlers in recent matches. should he regian form he would surely be one of the best central defenders in the Premiership.
Form is temporary and all that. It’s a shame that a drop in form automatically makes a player “shit” to some.
yeah but you have to accept that people are fickle…
people think its just the AAA mob but read a few blogs of chelsea or man city even manure and you’ll see they are just as fickle…one error and people call for their heads. Chelsea fans want a new manager every week…idiots
I’m not saying its right cause its not. but you ain’t gonna change to fickle nature of football fans.
I was trying to convince people about how much giroud actually brings to the team and he was getting slammed then he went on his first scoring binge, then he had another mini drought and he was back in the dog house now in the minds of the fans he might be alright again
as you say Dan: “form is temporary…”
Couldn’t agree more. I haven’t looked at the stats, but I’d be surprised if he’s not among the top in terms of interceptions per game.
Total nonsense
It is not just that he is slow. He doesn’t help the defence enough. He gets beaten in the air (he muust be the only 6’6″ defender who cannot jump!
Did none of you see the Liverpool game!!!!!!!!!!!
arsenal have a top 4 attack and a bottom 4 defence. The only one excempt is Jenkinson because he hasn’t played much. The rest are terrible. again and again we fail to hold on to a lead or have to chase. most games we have to score 3 to be certain of vistory.
The Liverpool game wasn’t all down to him but like I said earlier, it’s easy to blame a player you don’t rate.
The first goal was Sagna’s slip & then Vermaelen’s awful clearance. Mert was where he should have been but because he wasn’t on top of the ball the haters said he was out of position.
The second goal was lost in midfield and then Santos lost his man and the ball deflected off Ramsey. How that was Mertesacker’s fault I don’t know but it’s easy to blame a player you don’t rate.
Daniel
Mertesacker was not solely to blame for either goal, but he could have done better on both occasions, you cant just ignore this.
Surely part of being a defender is covering for errors of others, and getting them off the hook, on both occasions he did nothing.
The first goal he could do nothing about. How can he anticipate Sagna misplacing a pass and then falling over? The second goal… how can he anticipate a fluke deflection straight into the path of Henderson?
He probably could have done better on the second goal but so could 5 other players. The first one was an unfortunate slip that I cannot blame Sagna for but Vermaelen’s clearance was God-awful. Poor Ramsey took a lot of stick for that but how he was supposed to stop the ball deflecting off his heel and into Suarez’s path I don’t know.
lawafc, you have a weak intellect and a laughable grasp on the subtleties of the game. Dan, you’re wasting your time.
I don’t think we have seen the best of Per yet. I think he’s a great player the only thing that grates me about him at times is that he is a nice defender. Which is why he’s calm and read’s thegame well. but sometimes I’d like to see a little grit in his play, some channeled agression. For me that’s what’s missing, add that and he’d be a mountain of a man.
Nice blog once again!! Per I have always liked. He is calm and assured,our build up play mostly starts from him. At the moment he is a very good player who is improving. Will be great soon!!! Cheers Bob….
@AFClife14 your spot on with the reading of his game it’s exceptional. I was ecstatic we signed him. His mental game is what gets him thru the physical aspect of the game regarding pace Etc.. His awareness is second to none glad he’s our BFG!
@AFClife14: your spot on with the reading of his game it’s exceptional. I was ecstatic we signed him. His mental game is what gets him beyond the physical aspect of pace..His awareness is second to none. Great work hopefully rest of the fan base see this also
Im not saying Mertesacker is crap, or shit or anything like that. He is a good/ok defender.
What I am saying is that if we want to be the best again then for me we need a better centre back, and Mertesacker should be backup.
Kev, you seem to think I am attacking you. I’m not mate 🙂
I dont think that at all.
Its just you are assuming that people dont think Mertesacker is a good enough defender are saying so because they simply dont like him. Which is not the case, its just from what i have seen he is not top class in my opinion.
Not liking/not rating. It’s all interchangeable. What I am saying is that people have a view of a player and often refuse to change it. That negative view of a player often leads them to blame a player when it’s not entirely fair. That’s my opinion.
1) You’re not saying he’s crap/shit but you’re saying he’s not good enough to play, so you’re saying he’s crap/shit for all intents and purposes 2) We will never be “The Best” again, partially because we were never “The Best” ever. We’ve been extremely successful, and will be so again, but this comment betrays you as more of an Invincibles fan than an Arsenal fan. 3) You clearly don’t understand the game of football
I’ve been wishing for us to sign Mertesacker when he was still a Bremen player. As someone who follows German national team and Bundesliga, I admired him and thought he was what we were missing all thesey years – A smart defender at the back which will organise the team. It is no coincidence that since his arrival our defence looks much better and has more confidence.
As the author mentioned, pace is not the most important thing, a CB with good positioning and ability to read the game like Mertesacker can compensate on a lack of pace. He rarely misses a tackle and the offside traps which he organises are perfect usually. He also very tidy in his passing in both legs and knows to release the ball really quickly even if it looks clumsy to some people.
In addition I agree him and Kos is our pair since they complement each other better than Kos & TV5. Vermaelen isn’t as responsible at the back as Per, and goes forward way too much for a defender, I would have tried him as DM.
We should be happy we have Per, all our defenders can learn from his huge experience in International and European football. If we can sort out the GK position , we can have a defense which can be the greatest in the club’s history.
Brilliant prose and content. Bravo.
Very well written.
They are the same thoughts I hold bout Mikel Arteta. Most Gooners underrate what he does cos they don’t see him flying into tackles. Well, I told a mate of mine recently that the difference between Arteta and the likes of Tiote is that Arteta locks the doors to his house even before the thief thinks of coming in, Tiote however leaves the door open and only realises there’s a burglary when the thief comes in. Moral of the hypothesis is while one does his job with silent efficiency, the other battles it. The goof is that the majority see the latter as a warrior, and the former, a weakling.
lol
well said…except (going with the same metaphor) i would want to be caught robbing arteta’s house cause he is one of the best slide tacklers in the league…
Arteta is so bloody good!
Arteta diaby Wilshere
or
Arteta Wilshere Sanit
or even
Diaby wilshere santi
are excellent midfield combos…however due to injury prone status’ of arteta and diaby i think we need another defensive midfielder (capoue is my choice…seems maybe wengers too, commanding player, sure in possession keeps it simple. Most importantly he brings something a little different to what we good for situational match ups)
Watch the Suarez goal again Daniel.
When the ball breaks to Suarez watch Mertesacker. Then tell me he couldnt have dont anything. I watched Ashley Williams in a similar incident for Swansea vs Man U and he through himself in front of the goal bound shot,
I have watched it but why pick on Mertesacker? Why not say Sagna could have got to the ball too? They were of similar distance to it.
Like I said, it is easy to blame Mertesacker but there were FIVE errors before the ball flashed past him into the net so why pick on him? There’s no point us arguing this because you clearly won’t have your mind changed and I’m not going to have mine changed either.
Exactly, easy to blam Mertesacker, somehow Vermaelen never get blamed even tough he is a terrible defender and cost us countless of goals in the last 2 seasons.
By the way I watched yesterday the full game of France-Germany, Mertesacker was outstanding and commanding at the back, had a numerous of challenges and tackles that prevented definite goals and overall leaded fantastically the German defense.
I wouldn’t be bothered by the opinion of one who clearly doesn’t have command of his native English.
To play devil’s advocate here…
Dan i agree that there were 5 school boy errors but merte still could have done better. I think what kev is saying is that since this is a Merte discussion. so his errors cannot simply be ignored
I definitely blame Vermaelen #1 (WFT is he doing: kick the ball) for this goal, Sagna #2 (he shouldn’t slip under no pressure, but these things happen), Ramsey #3 (his reaction back heel flick on was stupid, hack it out for a corner, pass it to sagna, merte just be more aware around the box), merte # 4 (shoulda closed down suarez shot and been a bit more aware for the cross…but he is NOT as to blame as the other three) and Walcott #5 (coulda perhaps covered the run even though he clearly thought sagna would get it and start a counter)
all together the most embarrassing piece of team defending i have EVER seen from arsenal and close to the worst single piece of team defending i have ever seen in the EPL. it just seems they were meant to score then (how much did the singapore betting mob have on a goal at that moment..tongue only partially in cheek)
second goal he has to take some blame again his first attempt to tackle was poor and very un-mertesacker like and then he just jogged after the play instead of committing and charging after henderson to attempt another tackle (even a pen is better than a clear run on goal)…but again others were to blame aswell…
the whole point is that defensively no-one has been blame free recently and that is not good enough.
Against stoke we saw a better effort (kos was especially good) and we never looked like conceding but it was against a poor attack and now Koz and maybe TV5 are out…a problem…
one last comment…
even the best defenders make some mistakes…
its just the best make fewer of them. We have quality defenders i don’t doubt that but when are they going to start making fewer mistakes, show their quality and give us a surer defence we can be confident in.
All i say is it needs to happen soon cause if not we will need another CB in the summer (which we might need anyway)
Great post! I agreed last time and I agree again! It’s a shame support can be so fickle.
I’ve liked Mertesacker since before he even played for Arsenal; he really impressed me in the last world cup. But I could beat this horse all day.
BFG is a great defender and it’s about time people cut him some slack.