Former Arsenal defender William Gallas has criticised the roles Ben White, William Saliba and Oleksandr Zinchenko played in the defeat to Manchester United.
The Gunners enjoyed a perfect start to the new season after picking up five wins in a row before losing their first game of the season away at Old Trafford. Mikel Arteta's side had an opening goal ruled out after VAR intervened and deemed Martin Odegaard had fouled Christian Eriksen in the build-up, sparking a lot of discussion post-match from the likes of Roy Keane, Gary Neville and Paul Merson.
Arteta's decision to make a triple substitution after conceding a second goal came under fire from Keane and Neville, with the Arsenal boss opting for a more attacking setup for the final 20 minutes of the match. Gallas has instead taken aim at the majority of the Gunners' defence and claimed Arsenal continue to lack an experienced defender that can organise and lead from the back.
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Speaking to Genting Casino, the ex-Gunners defender believes his former side are missing an experienced head in defence as he criticised the roles White, Saliba and summer signing Zinchenko played in each of the goals Arsenal conceded at Old Trafford. Gallas said: "When you go to play against any of the big teams in the Premier League, you need players with personality and character to get anything from those games.
"I naturally look at the defenders. On Sunday, the performance showed me that Arsenal are still missing an experienced defender at the back. When Arsenal were suffering for a few moments, you need your players to show leadership - talk to each other - you need players that can take on the responsibility and dig in for a period. Arsenal didn’t do that.
"When I watched the game, at the beginning I thought to myself that Arsenal were looking very strong and looked like they were going to get a result. They were playing very good football and defended very compactly before United scored.
"I thought Arsenal looked like they were ready to take all of the points, but sadly, I saw the same small mistakes that we’ve seen from Arsenal before and you can’t make these types of errors against the best teams because you will get punished. On the first goal, Zinchenko had a moment to forget.
"He was caught out of possession and Antony was left on his own for an easy finish. The second and third goal - they were very similar in terms of errors being made.
"Against Manchester United, at Old Trafford, you can’t concede those types of goals, especially the second and the third one. That was a big mistake of Saliba and Ben White - they didn’t communicate properly and they conceded because of it. Their positioning was poor."
Gallas continued by questioning why Arsenal opted to play a high line against the threat of Marcus Rashford, with the United striker able to run in behind and score two quickfire goals on the counter-attack. Gallas added: "I don’t understand why Arsenal played with a line that high when there was time for them to come back into the game - it was unnecessary to play so high.
"Teams should only concede this type of goal when they are chasing a game in stoppage time, not when there is 15 minutes left to play! I’m a little bit disappointed for them because they went to Old Trafford with a great spirit - top of the league and confident - and played really well to begin with.
"But the story is the same; they conceded three goals and lost 3-1. It looks like that against the biggest teams, away from home, Arsenal are still going to have difficulties."
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