Poor Arsenal allow time wasting Ipswich to prosper

It was a strong eleven and frankly too many of the starting eleven did not perform to the level we needed tonight. Eboue was sloppy, although the rest of the defence played reasonably well, of the midfield three only Wilshere had a decent game, Denilson was his mediocre best and Cesc was markedly loose with his passing. Theo was the only one of the front three to come away with any credit, he kept working hard and chances did fall his way only to be thwarted twice by the excellent Ipswich keeper Fulop. Arshavin had a poor game but at least there was some movement, on the other hand Bendtner was terrible, numerous sloppy touches and some very tired and predictable movement off the ball, far far too static to keep the Ipswich defence on their toes.

The first half saw us create a couple of great openings in the first minute which we wasted, for the rest of the half we got worse as Ipswich were allowed to grow into the game. They created little though, Szczesny had a twenty yarder covered which flew wide and the only other chance was a header which went well over. The second half saw no improvement in our loose passing and the repeated donation of possession to Ipswich continued. There were far too many attempts at ridiculously tricky eye of the needle passes which gave the ball back to Ipswich time and time again.

The alarm bells should have rung when Priskin almost scored not long before the opener came, Djourou doing well to nip in and toe the ball away from him at the last. Priskin was the played through, the linesman missing the fact he was definitely half a yard offside, and he finished expertly leaving Koscielny with no chance at all. We created a few great chances, Walcott was twice unlucky with those saves from the alert Fulop, while Cesc missed s sitter from an excellent Gibbs cross, he also forced another good Fulop save with a well hit effort from the edge of the box.

Overall well done Ipswich, I would give them more credit than I am if they had not done so much cynical time wasting from as early on as the beginning of the second half. Maybe more of the fault should lie with the hopeless Martin Atkinson who allowed them to take the ball away and delay virtually every single free kick that we were awarded, he should have got the yellow card out early for this blatant cheating, and as he did not, Ipswich kept doing it and wasting a lot of valuable time than we could have done with at the end. A couple of shameful dives from their defenders were also rather notable, embarrassing stuff from any team, no matter how desperate they were. Wickham looked sharp, agile and handy, a stark contrast to the hapless Dane at the other end of the field.

Having said that you simply have to have more players on their game if you are going to win these kind of games away from home. Overall we were unlucky to lose it given the chances created by both sides, but even if we had got a draw, the performance was clearly not up to the mark. It always feels a bit harsh to single out certain individuals, but for me Denilson and Bendtner added very very little to our play tonight, although Cesc and Arshavin didn't have great games by any standard, they did threaten and threaten to do things at times. Denilson adds so little both defensively and offensively, while Bendtner doesn't have the strength and power to bully defences, he also doesn't have the pace and movement to open up defences. A far better performance is needed for the return leg, while some big doubts remain over certain players' ability to cut it at the top level playing for Arsenal.