Larry Ryan: Are we bound by belief in playing it out from the back? 

Despite all the hullabaloo about Arsenal’s ‘dinosaur tactics’ and reliance on wrestling, a potentially more interesting stat emerged late this week, via Opta.

KNOCK IT: Arsenal's David Raya goes long against Manchester City. Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images

The week has been all about anger and dark arts and set-pieces so there is only one place to start — that new Sky 'Bound by Belief' ad for their Ireland soccer sponsorships. The one where the whole nation, understandably concerned at our tendency — the men anyway — to leak from range, joins the action to give Courtney Brosnan and Gavin Bazunu a dig-out defending a last-minute free-kick.

Sadly, the execution is a shambles. We’ve an extra couple of hundred defenders on hand and we line them out in a five-deep defensive wall all the way across the pitch. There’s a time and a place for width and this is hardly it. You can nearly hear Ronnie Whelan lament that we’ve ‘got to be smarter’ when the equaliser dips past an unsighted keeper.