Arsene Wenger felt a draw would be a good result against Kiev and given the circumstances I suppose it was.
A last-gasp equaliser from William Gallas salvaged a point but in truth we should have won that game. We had the chances in the first half to have made life much more comfortable for ourselves but failed to take them. The best chance fell to Adebayor who intercepted a back pass, made space brilliantly for himself and with just the keeper to beat from little more than 12 yards his shot went high and wide. It was very poor finishing by any standards.
Robin van Persie had a half-decent chance which he crashed just wide with his right foot and late in the half van Persie cushioned Adebayor’s cross into the path of Cesc whose left-footed shot was weak and easy for the keeper. The Adebayor and Cesc chances are ones you would expect them to put away and 2-0 at half-time and it would have been a different story.
Typically we got sucker-punched. Gallas made an error in midfield which allowed them possession and when the cross came in the Kiev defender grabbed hold of Sagna’s shirt and pulled the right back down on top of him. It looked like a penalty at first glance to me and the referee thought so too. Of course we have the benefit of replays which showed it was a first class piece of cheating. They coolly dispatched the penalty to make it 1-0.
Bendtner and Vela were introduced as we pressed for a goal and gaps appeared at the back. At one stage they had a two on one and completely fucked it up. Eventually though the goal came. Theo Walcott, who was given a very rough ride, showed he’s not going to be kicked out of games by anyone and fired in a very good cross to the back post where Gallas poked it home. There was a touch of offside about it, I thought, but Kiev can hardly complain given the way they got their goal.
Despite three minutes of injury time we couldn’t find another and the boss was clearly frustrated at the end. He says it was because he couldn’t understand why so little time had been added on but I suspect the real frustration was with his players. That was a game we should have won and the ref/4th official is an easier target. The manager has had a difficult week though, preparing for an away game like this after the death of his father, so I can understand why he was a bit more emotional than usual. I don’t think we can really complain that the injury time wasn’t sufficient though, we had plenty of time before that to do what we needed to do.
Afterwards the boss said:
My feelings are a mixture of disappointment and relief. We were a goal down with three minutes to go and we didn’t lose. We had chances and didn’t take them and then we just didn’t create enough in the second half.
To me that’s the crux of it. I don’t really remember us forcing a save of any kind from their keeper in the second half. We reverted to the 4-5-1 away from home in Europe again, Alex Song doing well in the holding role, but for it to work properly you need the two midfielders ahead of him to sparkle and last night both Cesc and Denilson were quiet. I would like to see Song inject a bit more pace into his game, he does seem a bit lackadaisical at times, especially when needed to track back. Still, as much as it was a game we should have won it’s a game we could have lost and to drag it back and get the point away from home, and in Kiev too, should be seen as a positive.
The performance as a whole wasn’t great, the centre of our defence still worries me a lot, but the result could have been worse. A word for Theo who really did take a kicking last night from the left back and the left sided midfielder. His profile is high and defenders are going to give him that kind of treatment, it’s something he’s going to have to deal with from now on. And he had the last laugh, didn’t he? The ball across the face of goal for our equaliser was fantastic and it’s good to see he won’t be bullied. The boss was unhappy with the lack of protection from the ref saying the left back should have been sent off ‘three times’ but that’s never going to happen to the home team in Europe. The best response is to do what Theo did and hurt them with his football.
So a reasonable start to our European campaign if not the three points we wanted. It was an improvement on our last two visits to Kiev though so let’s try and take the good from it and not dwell too much on the negatives. We’ve got a difficult away game at Bolton coming up this weekend so we have to concentrate on that.
Right, that’s about it. There’s lots to talk about, no doubt, so have at it. More and an Arsecast tomorrow.
