Borrusia Dortmund Vs Arsenal | CL Group F

[friedslice]

I think this is the sign of things to come. A solid team performance but we lack the killer instinct or added bit of quality that makes the difference and gets results.
Need to sign a striker and quality AM in the window.

We've a solid squad now but nothing that'll challenge any of the top teams...yet.

I can very much see us finishing third in this group and going on to win the UEFA cup.

[mg86]

I think these players under Wenger will improve every single game for the next two months. To me it seems inevidable that they will further gel and learn how each other thinks simply from each additional practice and game. Then, in four weeks Vermaelen will be working his way back into the squad. Two weeks after that, Wilshere will be working back into the starting 11 as well. They will only strengthen the team. There is no rational reason to look at this Dortmund game and assess our squad and what it will achieve in the league or CL this early.

[starmandb]

Mertesacker does not look comfortable on the ball whatsoever.

Who cares. If that means he won't try any stupid passes in our box thats fine by me. Koscielny who is supposed to be a cultured CB passes the ball more to opposition forwards than teammates

If Per just keeps it simple and defends I'll say thank you very much

Dunno, personally, i thought he looked an arse hair away from making a monumental f**k up everytime it came near to him. I suppose it will even out once hes had a run of games.

I think games like the next one will defo be when we get to see the benefit of buying him.

Dont get me wrong, i think we played well collectively as a defensive unit. It just grates me that we are applauding a defensive display of resiliance against a team we would have pissed all over a few years back.

Offensively, we were poor and penned in for huge parts of the game, we couldnt even clear it properly. We need to start up our passing game soon, its been way too disjointed of late.

we went to dortmund in 2002 on the back of 3, 2-1 defeats
average performances from seaman, cole,pires, wiltord,gilberto[who headed a rosicky free kick into his own net] and campbell meant that despite taking the lead against the run of play[dortmund hit the post in the 1st and 15th minute]
we lost 2-1 thanks to a rosicky pen.only poor finishing from the germans stopped it being worse.
we were awful in the final third.
another example of the rose tints casting a shadow over our currant crop
it was a very good point last night

[CynicalGooner]

I'm hoping that is the annual wonder goal out of the way and we don't see any more of those against us this season.

When we defend poorly, we concede comedy goals. When we defend well, we concede 1 in a million goals!

[Inchpräctice]

Few things I forgot to mention last night.
We're currently a strange mish-mash of new players who clearly need to gel as they've never played together before.
There's a long way to go before we look like an organised outfit BUT I was impressed with the small signs of refreshing change e.g. finally having a CB that is tall enough to be first to the ball on virtually EVERY corner, and I like the fact that we now have the option of bringing Frimpong off the bench to try and hold on to a lead.
That means we can field TWO strong DMs when we need to instead of just Song & Denilson. Let's face it, bringing on Denilson was never going to help us hang on to anything.

I also notice that for the first time in years we are winning the ball high up the pitch in dangerous situations, mainly down to Arteta who did it twice in the first few minutes against Swansea. Last night it was RVP as well. Maybe he was inspired by Arteta?
Also nice to see that with Gervinho AND Theo we can torture the opposition LB and the RB and just to f**k with their heads we swap them around from time to time during the game. This doesn't happen with Arshavin.

It's very early on obviously but all these small signs give me hope that we might not be as bad as we think this season. The squad is not loaded with stars like Citeh but at least we have decent depth for a change, and we haven't even seen Santos, Ox or Park play yet.

[gzagee]

Decent result considering the performance and circumstances. I'm sure some of youse had us down to lose....

Anyways, mention goes to Song (2nd half display), Kossie (always put his body on the line), Chesney (despite the start to the season he hasn't had one bad game).
Thank feck Pricey shoved Yossi out wide, he was a complete and utter nuisance in the middle. On the left he was much more effective.
Arteta was tide, PM was alright. Both will get better I'm sure.


Oh and having watched Subotic closely I concluded Hummels is by far the better CB.

[CynicalGooner]

Work rate was better than I have seen it for literally years. When you're not playing well it's so important you make up the difference in hard graft so that was nice to see.

That and slightly better defending were the only positives I can take out of that performance (not saying it's not a good result), but a lot of the defending was last ditch stuff that ideally you'd not need to do. Comparing Dortmund and ourselves at the back they were so much more organised than us. If you need any more proof how awesome their two CB's are just think how little change we got out of either all night. Especially Hummels, he's a beast

[Arsenal~Fanatic]

The commentator was shouting on the top of his voice as to why Koscielny was trying to pass the ball to the
midfield players when we were under all out attack especially in the first half . He was trying to be little too
cute and could have easily cost us the game by trying to be too clever instead of trying to be sensible and
clearing the ball when the opponents were bombarding us . He was turned inside out several times by Kagawa
and Goetze . It was a pitiful sight. He was the worst player on the pitch for Arsenal in the first half by a
country mile . To be fair to him , he did improvein the second half ,but i won't be confident with him starting
a lot of games for us .

[PLF]

Told people Song was one of the best DMs in the PL. Once he's back to his best we wont have any problem in midfield at all.

Generally speaking what we saw yesterday was looking more like our real first team> add to that Verm and Wilshere and you can see why we will end our trophy drought this year.

[yosifun]

Told people Song was one of the best DMs in the PL. Once he's back to his best we wont have any problem in midfield at all.

Generally speaking what we saw yesterday was looking more like our real first team> add to that Verm and Wilshere and you can see why we will end our trophy drought this year.

Agreed but we still need to find our rhythm in the offence, Walcott Gervinho and v.Persie still need time to gel, also Arteta needs time to adjust.

[GunnGunn]

Song was epic yesterday, thats what i expect to see from a DM. I have no doubt its AW who has instilled this attack mentality into him, needs to shake it off.

[CynicalGooner]

It's the damn 4231. It makes him think he has to help the attack

and you can see why we will end our trophy drought this year.

[StLGooner]

It's the damn 4231. It makes him think he has to help the attack

and you can see why we will end our trophy drought this year.

It would be very ironic if we ended our trophy drought with arguably the worst team we've had since the drought began.

[yosifun]

It's the damn 4231. It makes him think he has to help the attack

and you can see why we will end our trophy drought this year.

It would be very ironic if we ended our trophy drought with arguably the worst team we've had since the drought began.

and with the most competitive league since the drought began.

[mg86]

Hey guys who watched the game, one question. On a night where Dortmund put away their chances and were clinical, us as well with our shots on goal, what would a more realistic picture of this game be?