Arsenal faced their biggest test of the season last night against Dortmund and it was a failure of a game from beginning to end. There were two teams full of injuries on the night but only one team proved they were good enough to cope and equipped with suitable back-ups to win the game…and that wasn’t Arsenal.
Dortmund were classy, organised, enthusiastic and full of fight, they didn’t stop playing football from beginning to end and they come at us in full force. I envied their tactics last night I have to admit.
We always knew this game was going to be very hard but once again the team crumbled and failed to have a plan for when the Dortmund goals went in. Unprepared, sloppy, inadequate and poor football, we’ve played Dortmund before and we know what to expect but we still managed to lose anyway.
This doesn’t come down to injuries as Dortmund had 7 players out and still played comfortably enough to win, if anything on full form they actually would have annihilated us. This comes down to tactics pure and simple, our formation of 4-1-4-1 is not working, Arteta is not strong enough to be in that position alone and the same goes for Welbeck upfront on his own.
We were outplayed tactically last night, we conceded stupid passes and made silly errors. Zonal marking proved ineffective once again and it is becoming tiresome to watch us continue with this. We are not closing down our opposition in the big games, we are struggling to cope heavily attacking football and that is one our biggest issues.
I agree with what Wrighty tweeted last night regarding the Ozil situation,
“Arsene get Ozil in the middle, get the team to play around him! He’s 42 mill worth of player for a reason! Do something with him PLEASE.”
We should be playing him in the middle, his stats show that is where he plays best so he has to play there.
We can blame all the players individually or as a team but the blame lies with Wenger on this one, no defensive cover, no DM bought, no plan b, c or d when we were are losing and the issue of how we play against the big teams needs to be addressed. Our football hasn’t been good for ages now, I can’t even remember the last time we beat a team with good football and with ease.
The one thing that has come from last night is that we at least know where we stand in terms of ability and what we need to do to improve. It was a our biggest test so far and highlighted everything we needed to see.
We put so much importance on qualifying for the Champion’s League every year but I wonder if it’s worth it? For money I suppose yes…but it’s not worth the embarrassment of our poor performances on a yearly basis. Let’s face it we’re not going to win it any time soon.
