Match report – By the numbers – Player ratings – Video
Well, that was bad – there’s no two ways about it. As a team performance it was abject; from an individual point of view there were too many players well below par; and overall it was about the worst way possible to kick off a Champions League campaign.
From the very start it was clear that Dortmund were going to make life difficult for us, as they do at home. They work hard, press high up the pitch, and make it as uncomfortable as possible for the opposition. That should be no surprise to us. What I didn’t expect was for us to make things even more difficult for ourselves.
We couldn’t do the basics, and by that I mean control and pass the football. Regardless of Dortmund’s pressure, it was frustrating to see the ball ricochet away from our players as if they were wearing wellies rather than football boots. On top of that, we looked physically jaded – lacking the energy required to cope with all the running they did. It’s no surprise to read that by the end of the 90 minutes Dortmund’s players had run, collectively, 11km more than ours.
They should have been out of sight by half-time. Only a string of saves by Szczesny, and some pretty poor finishing, kept us in the game. We actually had a great chance to go ahead when Aaron Ramsey fed Danny Welbeck, but the striker’s effort was clipped wide of the post when he should have scored. Would it have changed the overall game, we’ll never know, but it certainly wouldn’t have done us any harm.
When you see a player a player like Mkhitaryan blast over from just about 6 yards, with the goal at his mercy, there’s a part of you that thinks you might just get away with it, but in typical Arsenal style we self-destructed just before half-time. From our own throw in deep in their half we lost the ball, bimbled along like old men as Immobile charged towards goal and, although he got a bit of luck with an attempted cut back inside, his finish was too good for Szczesny.
I know folk have since bemoaned the lack of a ‘real’ defensive midfielder to provide cover in that situation, and I don’t disagree, but I think it was a goal that was still utterly preventable with the players we had. For a start, don’t give the ball away so stupidly from the throw-in, or don’t be caught so high up the pitch so close to the break, but a more cynical team would have stopped that run one way or another before he got to goal. Take a yellow card and be done with it.
I’m all for the purity of the game when we can knock it about like angels wearing crystal boots made from unicorn tears, but this team is a long, long way from that right now, so we need to do what others team do in situations like those. Stop the goal, worry about the consequences afterwards. That’s something that should run through the team, you don’t necessarily need a defensively-minded midfielder to do it (although it wouldn’t hurt).
So 1-0 down at half-time and we needed to get ourselves sorted for the second. Instead, the first touch we had was Koscielny missing a header back to the keeper and having to try sweep up his own mess, followed by Jack Wilshere lumping a hopeful pass straight for a throw. Basics not being done again, and all it did was heap pressure on us.
The defending for the second goal was hapless. The centre-halves were split open too easily by a routine ball and bit of movement, while Szczesny (who was about our best player on the night with more saves in the second period), went a bit Fabmunia, charging out of his goal when he really didn’t need to. Aubameyang’s bobbling finish evaded Koscielny on the line but it was no less than they deserved really.
As an attacking force we were more or less impotent, putting little or no pressure on them at any stage. We failed to win a single tackle in their half all night. We had just 5 shots to their 23. They looked as if they might score with any attack, we looked, for the most part, incapable of anything vaguely threatening.
Danny Welbeck fashioned an excellent chance for himself late on with a great turn and burst into the box, but smashed his shot over the bar. Composure was required in front of goal, he didn’t have it. I think the goals will come for him, but other strikers who missed chances like that would have been given a significantly harder time. He still has the sheen of newness about him which deflects some of that criticism, but he was bought to put those kind of chances away.
The manager rightly hooked the ineffective Ozil and an Aaron Ramsey who must have thought it was early 2012 again, bringing on Oxlade-Chamberlain and Cazorla. After that we looked a little more effective, but when I say a little I’m talking an absolute Dinklage here. Podolski got on after sending a search party for his shin pads, not finding the missing one and using one of Ozil’s instead.
The fun of the night was compounded late on when Jack Wilshere picked up an ankle injury in a challenge, with the manager admitting afterwards he ‘turned his ankle’, the Arsenal injury du jour. That he was allowed stay on in a game which was done and dusted and when he clearly couldn’t run makes me question our approach in situations like this. It’s not ideal playing the last few minutes with 10 men but it’s better than potentially exacerbating an injury.
Afterwards, the manager said:
Congratulations to Dortmund, they were the better team. We had a disappointing performance and the victory is normal. They were better and stronger than us in midfield, I agree with that. But it’s very difficult on the night to go into any individual assessment of any players because as a team we were not at the requested level.
For me it was telling that Hector Bellerin, a 19 year old playing his first game at this level, wasn’t the one who looked most out of his depth. When you have a lad like that making his debut, you need to the senior players to step up and guide him through the game. You don’t want a midfield that was up its own arse, and Mesut Ozil ahead of him on the right hand side where he looked even more lost than usual.
Would it not have made sense to start the hard working Alexis there, to both give him a dig-out defensively and an option when he had the ball? That would have allowed Ozil to play in the middle where he’s best – although right now it’s hard to think that a spell on the bench might be his most effective position.
I do know this was our first defeat of the season but we’ve won just two of our last seven games. The big worry, ahead of some upcoming fixtures, is that we went away from home against quality opposition and really, really struggled. When you consider Dortmund’s injury problems were, probably, worse than ours, and they still managed to put in a performance like that it’s hard not to be fretful about what lies ahead for us. After some real positives taken from the Man City display, to play the way we did was pitiful.
I’ve said before that I think the manager is struggling to find the right balance in his team. This 4-1-4-1 just isn’t working right now. Perhaps it’s a case we need to grow more accustomed to it, but frankly it left us, and the shortcomings we have in certain positions, exposed last night. If you’ve got a deep-lying midfielder who is just back from injury and who’s not the quickest anyway, why not give that player some help instead of instructing your team to play in a way which is going to leave the kind of gaps Dortmund thrived on?
We look like a team that’s uncomfortable in the system we’re trying to play and it’s difficult to pick out any game this season where we’ve been effective for 90 minutes. I think the manager needs to consider changes in formation and personnel ahead of Saturday’s trip to Villa (who sit second in the table and who look strong defensively). Oxlade-Chamberlain and Cazorla need to come back in. If he’s going to persist with Ozil, play him in his best position.
It’s not as if we don’t have good players. On paper (bar the right back debutant) that looked like as strong a team as we had out there last season, and it’s not one that should have been overrun the way it was. To me that comes down to the approach and the way we’re set-up, and that comes down to the manager. Yes, he has a right to expect his players to be able to do the simple things, but he also needs to be able to react when things go wrong.
They went wrong last night, it’s up to him to react and put things right for this weekend and beyond, because if we play like that against the top Premier League opposition, you can be sure they won’t be as wasteful as Dortmund were.
Till tomorrow.
