Jamie Carragher has identified a “huge problem” area at Arsenal that “only Manchester United are worse” at after their draw with Crystal Palace on Wednesday.
Arsenal took the lead twice on the night through Jakub Kiwior and Leandro Trossard but were pegged back courtesy of stunning goals from Eberechi Eze and Jean-Philippe Mateta, and were fortunate to walk away with a point in the end with Palace the side pushing for victory in the last ten minutes.
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Eze scored with a superb volley from the edge of the Arsenal box having been picked out by Adam Wharton direct from a corner, and Carraghr took aim at set-piece coach Nicolas Jover at the end of the game, joking that the club should look to cut his wages.
Carragher told Sky Sports: “In terms of percentage, only Man United are worse than Arsenal set piece-wise this season. So when we make a big deal about the set-piece coach… he’s absolutely out of this world in terms of going forward, but they’ve got a big problem defensively.
“So should we be cutting his wages in half? Do they need a defensive set-piece coach?
“It’s been one of the stories of the season and rightly so. It’s unbelievable. You feel like they are going to score a goal from a set-piece in every game, or come very close to scoring.
“Of course he’s had a huge impact but it is funny that they are having huge problems themselves.”
Gary Neville previously labelled Jover as the “most annoying bloke in football” due to his animated presence on the touchline from set pieces, at which point Carragher defended him, claiming he’s worth every penny of his salary.
Carragher told Neville: “I’ll tell you what, give him what he wants.
“If you were that set-piece coach for Arsenal, you could write your own contract, couldn’t you? You couldn’t get rid of him.
“You know, if he said, ‘I want 25 grand a week,’ you’d have to give it to him, wouldn’t you?”
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Carragher also hit out at Martin Odegaard after the draw with Palace, claiming the Arsenal captain has had an “average season” by his standards.
The pundit said: “I feel like a lot of the time, he [Odegaard] is not in the positions he should be. Which is between the lines. Not so much this season, I think he’s had an average season but before that and I was looking at him thinking he was almost on the level of Kevin De Bruyne when he gets the ball between the lines.
“He was threading things, everything was going through him, felt like I was watching one of the best players in the Premier League.
“He’s always coming out of the danger area, he’s almost coming into a central midfield position, any easy position for me where he can make nice passes, look neat and tidy but not really hurting anybody.”
