Porto punish sloppy Arsenal

My mid match comments can be seen below, if ever a ninety minutes summed up our qualities and weaknesses then this was it. Two awful bits of defending cost us two shocking goals. No matter how good we looked at times, no matter that we were in the ascendancy when Porto scored their second, you simply will not win anything defending like complete and utter numpties.

Fabianski must shoulder a lot of the blame but it would be unfair to blame one man. At 2-1 down when Porto stuck men behind the ball we didn't look likely enough to get back into the game, there were a few decent moments but there was not enough clear cut. Denilson is not an awful player by any means, he'd look good at a mediocre Premiership club, but the lad is simply not Arsenal quality. Clichy is also looking rather dodgy, even though he has been out for some time, his lapses have become a trend over the last couple of seasons.

This was no world beating Porto side, they were distinctly average in my opinion, so the way in which they took our defence apart at times was very worrying. Sol did very well but where is the strength in depth in our squad, it just isn't there is it. The fact that we had only one fit striker meant that although Bendtner did well, he didn't get enough support and there was no option to bring another proper striker on later on when we desperately needed a goal.

Maybe the back pass was accidental, maybe Rosicky should have had a penalty, maybe we did lose because of two awful goalkeeping errors, maybe we'll still get pass this rather average Porto side, I don't know. What is clear is the fact that the trends are there for all to see and they point to the fact that we have systemic defensive problems that have not been addressed, the spaces left in front of our defense at times were gargantuan, we also do not have the right balance of talent in our squad. I know this is very negative, it does come as a bit of a knee jerk response, but if we had equalised it really would have just papered over the cracks, we are not good enough in some ways and I think we need to face that.