I should think all Arsenal fans will be felling a bit deflated this morning, after watching our extremely toothless defeat at Porto last night. Right from the start it looked like both sides were happy to play out a very boring bore draw, and the game seemed to be played at a very pedestrian pace.
The game limped very timidly right until the end, when we were rightly punished with the losing goal being conceded in added time. Arteta can hardly be pleased but considering that we had 70% of the possession in the first half it is quite amazing that we managed to get through the whole game without a single shot on target, and Arteta seemed to indicate that he would have been happy with the draw to take back to the Emirates in a fortnight’s time.
It was interesting to hear the boss admit that he wasn’t surprised by Arsenal’s performance, when he told Arsenal.com after the match: “No, obviously we’re very disappointed by the way we gave the game away at the end, and not managing that situation well enough, and you get punished in the Champions League – if you cannot win it, you don’t lose it.
“We really dominated the game, but we lacked purpose, especially in the first half to have much more aggression, to break lines, to play forward, to generate much more threat in their backline.
“In the second half, there were much better things, and we generated a lot of situations without really creating much from it, but we’ll learn from it. Now it’s clear, it’s half time. If you want to be in the quarter finals, you have to beat your opponent, that’s clear, and that will be the purpose and the plan with all our supporters together to do it.”
So it looks like Arteta was clearly counting on us restricting Porto last night, and using our home advantage to progress to the Quarters. As I explained in our form guide before the game, Porto are extremely hard to beat in Portugal, but are not great on their travels, so it would appear that Arteta’s strategy could be the correct key to the final outcome.
But, oh my, what a boring and unentertaining game we had to endure!
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