Match report – Player ratings – Video

Well that really wasn’t how we wanted, or expected, the opening game of the Champions League campaign to go. We knew the manager was going to make changes, and nobody seemed overly worried beforehand about it because the team we put out really should have been capable of winning the game.

Out went Cech (weirdly), Bellerin, Monreal, Coquelin, Ramsey and Walcott, in went Ospina, Debuchy, Gibbs, Arteta, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Giroud. The hope was that these guys would step it up, having something to prove and to show they merited more than the peripheral roles granted to them so far. Instead, almost to a man, they under-performed, and in some cases the paucity of their displays contributed considerably to the defeat.

Olivier Giroud is a dark place right now, I think we can see that, but that doesn’t make his sending off any less stupid. While I have some sympathy for the second yellow card – it was a fairly nothing foul that was a free kick and not much more – he can have no complaints about his first. I didn’t agree with the referee’s decision, he seemed to be more fouled than fouler in that situation, but when you show such open dissent the way he did you’re only going to talk yourself into a booking.

It also means the referee is going to be watching you more closely than others and if you give him any opportunity to show his power then he’ll do that. So it was when he made that foul, and off he went. A couple of weeks ago we saw a referee with some common sense when Coquelin ran it close at Crystal Palace. Not every foul is worthy of a yellow card, but the difference is Coquelin hadn’t previously told the referee where to go in a very industrial and aggressive way.

So it was dense, especially after he’d looked quite dangerous, forcing the keeper into a good save with header from a corner. He really does seem like a very brittle character, far too sensitive, and rather than channeling his obvious frustration with his current lot into a powerful performance – something a guy of his size should be able to – he felt sorry for himself and got himself sent off a result. I’m sure the arm around the shoulder has been tried, it’s kick up the arse territory now. With a steel-capped boot.

Their first goal came when Mathieu Debuchy and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain contrived to make our right hand side an inviting place into which their left-back should run. The Frenchman was too far inside, leaving us with a man over in the middle and no protection out wide, while Oxlade-Chamberlain’s was late to recognise the danger as the man ran past him. Debuchy never got back across properly, Ox tried to chase their man down but when Ospina blocked the shot it rebounded off the England man and into the net.

The second, early in the second half, was just as bad from a defensive point of view. When you see Kieran Gibbs jump half-heartedly at the near post, and the lack of aggression from others in trying to win the ball, it’s a real worry. It doesn’t matter that Giroud would probably have been the guy in that area, we knew he wasn’t there and had to do more to protect our goal. I can’t figure out what was going through Gibbs’ mind there.

We did look vaguely threatening at times, Ozil had the ball in the net but from an offside position, and throwing on Walcott, Coquelin and Campbell for Gibbs, Arteta and Oxlade-Chamberlain sparked a bit of life into us. Alexis’s pass to Theo saw him score a very good goal in the 79th minute to offer some hope, but ultimately it was too much to ask that we could pinch another.

So, Dinamo win their first ever European game against an English club, their first Champions League Group Stage game since 1999, and we might as well have gift-wrapped it for them and put a lovely bow on top. Afterwards, Arsene Wenger expressed frustration with the officials rather than his own player’s stupidity, but admitted his own part in the result, saying:

You know that when you don’t win the game you have to look at yourself and think, ‘I didn’t get it right’. I personally don’t believe that the players who came in had a bad game. It just didn’t work. We know we have to do that again. We were maybe a bit unlucky and maybe lacked cohesion or some competition in some situations. I have to analyse that. It’s very difficult to give you a definite answer straight after the game.

While I understand the need to analyse it more closely, it does boil down to the players coming in not performing at the right level. Those players generally had bad games. Mathieu Debuchy’s very public complaints about losing his place ought to have ensured a display that really gave the manager something to think about. Instead he, along with Kieran Gibbs, have further cemented Bellerin and Monreal as the first choice options.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is another whose impact as a starter is often much less than when he’s thrown on from the bench, and his weaknesses in our defensive third have become increasingly obvious. He’s got to work on that in a big way, because it’s not the first time it’s been costly this season. Arteta looked more exposed when we went down to 10 men (I thought he’d been ok up until that point), while we’ve already touched on Giroud and his self-destructive display.

It is a team game, of course, but we got none of the things you want from the players given a chance last night. They were off the pace, plus when you have a daft red card and have to play over half the game with 10 men it exacerbates those weaknesses. It’s a worry that there wasn’t more from these guys. While you could argue that’s the risk you run when you make that many changes, the other side of that is that they are capable of much better.

I don’t know if it changes a huge amount in terms of the group, Bayern were always favourites to top it, and we have enough games to make up for this loss. We’ve been here before, in fairness, but it was absolutely not what the doctor ordered ahead of Chelsea on Saturday. The extra energy expounded by playing with 10 men, the effect on confidence and morale, none of it ideal preparation for a game against a team like that – and one who have perhaps restored some of what they’re about with a 4-0 win last night.

The only possible benefit is it might redouble our focus before then, because a performance that comes anything close to last night will only result in one thing at Stamford Bridge.

Back tomorrow with an Arsecast. Until then.