Don’t Panic Arsenal Fans! by Sam P
There is a lot of anger and recrimination going on among the Arsenal fraternity again, after a woeful display against Borussia Dortmund in Germany that could easily have ended in another one of those really heavy away defeats that we had to suffer last season.
So we have the inevitable calls for Wenger to leave the club, while players like Mesut Ozil, Mikel Arteta and Per Mertesacker are being slated and told they are not good enough to play for the Gunners. And I can understand people’s feelings but just want to call for a bit of common sense and patience here.
I think we might have been getting a bit carried away after we beat Dortmund last season, but that was a really tough game in which we rode our luck. And don’t forget that we were the first English team to ever win there, so losing in Dortmund is not a surprise.
I know we were well outplayed, but Jurgen Klopp declared that his team’s performance was `perfect` and any side would have struggled. With defensive issues meaning our 19-year old Spanish right back made his full debut, while the most defensive of our midfielders Flamini was unavailable and Arteta had hardly played was always going to make it hard.
And as Wenger reminded us, we did have three decent chances to score and if Welbeck had been at the club longer he may well have taken one of not all of them. So don’t panic yet Gooners, remember that we played really well against Man City in the previous game and that we have injury problems and new players settling into a new system.