Arsenal Mantap

Not a great mid-week for Arsenal, eh ? Having seen Spurs beaten the last European Champion, we have a sadder fact the following day by losing at Ukraine. I guess Mircea Lucescu is celebrating at Ukraine having proved himself right regarding the first encounter which he claimed was an unfair result. The coach accused the referee of  being biased letting Arsenal players making unfair challenge which is worth a red card.

Anyhow, credit due to Shakhtar for their win on us. They deserved the win having seen us unable to play our passing game like we used to. Having started the game convincingly with an early goal from Theo marvelous strike, we lost the concentration and got complacent. A defence with Djourou and Eboue starting has costed us as predicted. Djourou had an up and down performance last night having a few of good blocks but also a bunch of costly play. As for our wing back, Clichy and Eboue, they played awefully. A couple of mispassed and lost of concentration has seen us losing the lead by an owngoal from Craig Eastmond. Later on, our serial howler Clichy has cost us another goal right before entering the break. It was and has to be Eduardo which beautifully placed the ball onto the net leaving Fabianski not much to do. The Croatian has come back to haunt us after his emotional exit from Arsenal.

After the break, we start the second half more brightly, but some of the lads were still underperform. Some of the obvious are Rosicky and Eboue. I really hope Rosicky can revive his career here. He has been one of my favourites pre-his injury. Nowadays, he can't even get the shoot target properly. But to be fair, he indeeed has a couple of solid game with us. I guess he just need time to adjust remembering he doesn't get played regularly, but I don't see it coming so I guess his day is numbered.

Eventually, as we all knew, the equalizer was not meant to be. Except a few good chances we missed from Jack and Squillaci, we didn't really seem to get the equalizer. It must be a frustating night for our returning missing piece, Bendtner (at least it was what he claimed himself to be). Having granted his wish to start replacing Chamakh who I reckon needed rest, he performed not very well. After having treatment due to small injury in the first half, he barely run on the pitch. It was expected when he eventually was subbed with Chamakh when the match entering the last quater of the 2nd half. Adding Vela and Chamakh up front  replacing Eastmond and Bendtner proved to be useless and ending us not catching the one goal down. Thus, we finally tasted our first defeat in Europe at East European land.

On the press conference, Wenger admitted that the early lead made the team become complacent and lost the concentration. The team did recover in the second half but the manager said that the team still lack of urgancy. Wenger admitted this lost is caused by a lack of maturity of his men which resulting the inability of the team to convert the chances on the second half.

Another immaturity excuses, eh ? I am really confused with Wenger's statement. He just stated that we are already matured last weekend when we got the last minutes winner. But now when we lost, he said we aren't matured enough. These excuses of being not matured enough has become cheap and start to ignore me.

What do you think as a fellow Gooner ? Please leave your comment below to voice your thought.

Till then, Arsenal Mantap !!