Zagreb Ref Was On A Power Trip & Now Arsenal Are In A Weird Place

Match Review: Dinamo Zagreb 2 Arsenal 1 - Champions League 16/09/15

Wednesday’s debacle has left us in a weird place. To call it an upset would be a severe understatement. Despite Zagreb being unbeaten in eleven months (they are effectively guaranteed their league title each year), they hadn’t won in the Champions League since before the millennium. They had a vastly inferior team, despite our rotation and we have an excellent record against teams of their stature. What happened on Wednesday was inexplicable and potentially disastrous for our Champions League campaign.

With Chelsea coming up on Saturday, Wenger rotated and went as far as to leave Ramsey and Bellerin out of the squad completely. Debuchy, Gibbs, Arteta, Chamberlain, Giroud and Ospina all came into the starting line up, with Monreal, Coquelin, Walcott and Cech dropping to the bench. Despite the changes, the team should have been more than capable of beating an organised, but average Zagreb side.

However, the Arsenal that turned up was the one we are all too familiar with. The lacklustre, soft-centred one that concedes a goal and wanders back to the halfway line with their heads bowed and their hands on their hips. It was a lifeless, insipid display and we deserved nothing from the game. We had a few chances in the first twenty minutes, where Giroud could have scored twice, but Zagreb’s dangerous looking counter attack eventually stung us.

For me, Debuchy was at fault mainly, but Chamberlain didn’t cover himself in glory. He reacted late to seeing the full back’s mistake and when Ospina made a good save from the initial shot, Chamberlain clumsily deflected the ball in. Suggestions that their man was offside feel a little desperate; when the ball was played he looks level, if he was off, it was by the tiniest amount and would have been impossible for the linesman to see.

Olivier Giroud has had a pretty rubbish couple of weeks and he promptly compounded our misery by earning himself a second yellow card and leaving us with ten men. I will defend Giroud a little, in that the referee took an instant dislike to him and gave absolutely everything he could against the striker. His first yellow came from arguing against a frankly ludicrous foul that had been given against the Frenchman and the second was for a very soft, if clumsy foul miles from goal. While I think the referee was getting high on power and delighting in the chance to send an Arsenal player off, Giroud was stupid to give him that chance. He overreacted in gaining the first yellow and the second was a challenge he didn’t need to make. It was a very harsh red, but Giroud was definitely culpable.

Trying to come from behind with ten men is very difficult when you’re playing well, but it’s impossible if you defend like pillocks. Having come out very positively at the start of the second half and looked like possibly drawing level, we chucked it all away from a corner. We’d already had one close call, with Zagreb hitting the post, but we failed to heed the warning. The trio of Gibbs, Arteta and Koscielny all made pathetic half attempts to defend the ball at the near post and left Fernandes with a simple finish. It was amateurish and embarrassing.

Walcott did get a goal back late on, after we went to three at the back and made a triple substitution, but it always looked a consolation. Even when Theo scored I didn’t feel that hopeful. Zagreb simply sat a little deeper and took the fouls that we were all to ready to commit, particularly Joel Campbell. The result leaves us with an uphill struggle and we may need to get a result in one of games against Bayern to get out of the group. While that’s something we should have been striving for anyway, we shouldn’t have made it a necessity for ourselves.

The really worrying thing is it seems it's becoming easier and easier for smaller teams to beat us. A simple tactic of staying compact and crowding the midfield seems to render us devoid of threat. We don’t help ourselves either, as we often had for players across their back four and no-one in the midfield for Arteta and Cazorla to link up with. It also seems that the players in back up roles at the moment are way off the pace. Only Ospina out of the six that came in can have any pride in his performance. Giroud is shot of confidence, Arteta looks incredibly rusty and Chamberlain, Debuchy and Gibbs are playing miles below the level they are capable of. Joel Campbell’s cameo off the bench was a disaster too, as he committed several fouls that allowed Zagreb to take the sting out of the last ten minutes.

Make no mistake, if we turn up at Stamford Bridge on Saturday and don’t improve our performance 100% we will be humiliated. Chelsea have been terrible this season, but Mourinho will have spent the week whipping his team up into a frenzy for this game and they will be out for blood. They’re a wounded beast and we are struggling. Aside from the Stoke game we’ve been pretty poor and don’t see how that’s going to change in time for this match. Despite it being a huge opportunity to decimate Chelsea’s title hopes and lay out our own challenge for the league, I’m fearful of what I’m going to witness this Saturday.

Teams

Dinamo Zagreb (4-5-1)
Eduardo, Pinto (Y), Sigali, Taravel, Pivaric, Machado, Ademi, Antolic (Y) (Rog 82' (Y)), Soudani, Pjaca (Benkovic 88’), Fernandes (Coric 74’)
Subs
Jezina, Henríquez, Hodzic, Coric, Benkovic, Rog, Matel

Arsenal (4-2-3-1)
Ospina, Debuchy, Gabriel, Koscielny, Gibbs (Campbell 65' (Y)), Cazorla, Arteta (Coquelin 64’), Oxlade-Chamberlain (Walcott 64’), Özil, Sánchez, Giroud (Y-Y-R)
Subs
Walcott, Monreal, Flamini, Chambers, Campbell, Cech, Coquelin

Player Ratings

Ospina - 6/10 - Did do anything wrong, in fact made a couple of good saves
Debuchy - 3/10 - Horror show, Bellerin is miles ahead right now
Koscielny - 4/10 - Usually dependable, but was far from his best
Gabriel - 7/10 - Our standout performer, excellent tackles and interceptions
Gibbs - 3/10 - Monreal will be resting easy as number one left back
Arteta - 4/10 - A tough return after a long injury
Cazorla - 5/10 - Gave the ball away more than normal
Alexis - 5/10 - Couldn’t really get in the game but worked incredibly hard as usual
Özil - 5/10 - Often too far from the man in possession, but played well in the 2nd half
Chamberlain - 3/10 - Defensively dopey and in attack he offered little, very disappointing
Giroud - 1/10 - I’ll back him 100% to bounce back, but this was a nightmare game for him
Subs
Walcott - 6/10 - Finished his chance well, but I want to see much more from him at CF
Campbell - 2/10 - Horrendous, demonstrated why he’s had little game time
Coquelin - 6/10 - Did a good job of aggressively winning the ball back