Arsenal: Szczesny, Sagna, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Gibbs, Arteta, Ramsey, Wilshere, Rosicky, Ozil, Giroud
Subs: Fabianski, Vermaelen, Cazorla, Monreal, Bendtner, Gnabry, Jenkinson
—
Arsenal fell to their first defeat in 12 games after a 2-1 loss against Dortmund in the Champions League tonight.
Arsene Wenger made two changes from the team that beat Norwich at the weekend with Aaron Ramsey replacing the injured Mathieu Flamini, and former Dortmund man Tomas Rosicky replacing Santi Cazorla.
Unlike the Gunners last European game, there was no quick fire start with the visitors setting the early pace with some ambitious shooting, and one from Marco Reus that dipped not far wide of Szczesny’s far post.
The warning signs were there and in the 16th minute Dortmund took the lead. Aaron Ramsey caught in possession on the edge of the Arsenal box, it fell for Mikhitarayan who drilled it past Szczesny into the bottom corner. 0-1.
Olivier Giroud tried to get Arsenal going again with strong play down the right hand side before being upended as he drove into the box. A free kick from just outside the area was met by Koscielny but his header went over the bar.
Jack Wilshere was almost put through by Rosicky but the bouncing ball just bypassed him and in the challenge with Weidenfeller he looked to hurt his ankle, requiring treatment off the pitch for a time.
It was Giroud again who tried to get Arsenal going. The Frenchman won the ball down the left hand side, his cross was cleared before falling to Rosicly. The Czech’s shot from outside the box was on target before it was cleared off the line by Hummels with the keeper beaten.
And if anyone deserved a goal it was the Frenchman and he equalised for the Gunners in the 41st minute. It began with a Mertesacker tackle on the edge of our box, Arsenal came forward and Ramsey played Sagna down the right hand side. He curled in a cross which Weidenfeller failed to deal with, the ball sat up beautifully for Giroud to smash home from close range.
It was enough to send the teams in level at the half, with time for Arsene Wenger to reinvigorate his charges before the second period.
And Arsenal began the second half brightly with a quickfire move down the right hand side, set up by a great Rosicky pass, but Wilshere’s cut back was cleared. Almost immediately Kieran Gibbs made a good tackle to prevent a Reus cross causing danger.
Dortmund found space a couple of times down the Arsenal left, and Grosskreutz was in a great position but in two minds between a cross and a shot he essentially passed it back to Wojciech Szczesny.
Neither team seemed able to find any rhythm as Arsene Wenger brought Santi Cazorla on for Jack Wilshere. Dortmund had something of a let off when Lewandowski was booked for a straight arm to the face of Laurent Koscielny, the kind of challenge that more often than not ends up with a red.
Dortmund, to the joy of live bloggers everywhere, brought off Mikhitarayan and Blascczykowski off for Hoffman and Aubemyang, but it was Arsenal who threatened. A fine move down the right hand side saw Ozil pull the ball back for Cazorla, but the Spaniard’s shot on the run hit the outside of the corner of the goal.
Cazorla then saw another goalbound effort blocked by Sven Bender as the Gunners looked to build the pressure in the final stages. The former Malaga man almost got on the end of a Sagna cross only for the keeper to grab it just before him.
But for all Arsenal’s late pressure it was Dortmund who took the lead in the 82nd minute. They broke down our left, Grosskreutz put in a cross which found Lewandowski at the far post who sidefooted it on the volley past Szczesny. 1-2.
Arsenal brought on Nicklas Bendtner for Aaron Ramsey as the visitors put on another centre-half to hold onto the lead. Serge Gnabry replaced Tomas Rosicky as the Germans looked to close out the game with some experienced diving and time wasting.
In the end, Arsenal could do nothing to get back into it, and after Napoli’s win against Marseille, the ‘group of death’ was thrown wide open with three teams on 6 points.
Fuck the ref!
What?! Get a grip, the ref didn’t make the mistakes which cost us the game. The players did.
He took his sweet time making sure they had regulation walls for every single free kick. He was extremely whistle-happy with regard to their players going down to get said free kicks. He blew the whistle slightly before the end of the allotted 3 mins stoppage, almost desperately before we took the throw in. Blaming the referee is frowned upon, and it certainly wasn’t his fault we lost the game. However, he was on Dortmund’s side in that second half, big time.
Sorry but that simply isn’t true. I’ll happily slate the referee when he deserves it but not tonight. We weren’t up for it mentally tonight, too tentative, and Dortmund played very cleverly, defensively and tactically, waiting for us to make defensive mistakes to gift them goals which we did.
The defensive errors and the lack of clean sheets have been the only concern lately, and tonight we paid the price.
He did take his sweet time with every stoppage for both teams and certainly slowed the game down. He couldn’t wait to get off as well. Wasn’t the reason for the result and we are certainly not out of it.
I too was swearing at the ref but not the man in the middle in particularly for this game, moreso the refereeing in general for Champions League games. You can’t get away with some of the stuff that BPL refs let slide, it is infuriating to watch but the best European sides seem to adapt quickly to this type of refereeing and English clubs don’t. Overall I was disappointed because we gifted them a goal early and did well to get back in to it. From about 55-80th minute it really seemed like we were going to get one and… Read more »
We played decently without being great. Cazorla made a big difference. Rosicky didn’t have his best game today. It’s an acceptable loss, still need to make it out of the league though
Rosicky was our best midfielder tonight.
Ozil was excellent towards the end. And cazorla was a huge spark. All I’m saying is I’ve seen rosicky play better.
eh, Arteta beg to differ. He was our best player, although not doing anything fancy. Well, except for some fancy tackles of course.
I’m just going to throw a positive out there – this was a gigantic away game and the scoreline was pretty well reflective of the teams’ respective qualities shown tonight. We have a great chance for revenge that, if we perform well, will set the stage for us for the remainder of the group. Onward and Upward!
Cazorla was outstanding when he came on. Ozil was marked out of the game really. If I had to criticise anyone in midfield it would be Ramsey and Wilshere for holding onto the ball too much which you won’t get away with against teams like Dortmund. They’re young though, this is a learning curve. No doubt they’ll be even better for having played this game.
He was but I see his argument there tactic was to mark Ozil out of the game. Cazorla playing from the start will have caused them more problems.
Please stop praising Ozil too highly whenever he did something OK or got involved in the goals. He’s been doing OK overall but… do we have the right to criticize when he played like he did tonite? Was nowhere to be found and absolutely harmless with BVB’s defense apart from that pass to Cazorla.
Realistic Fan if Ozil is not pulling his weight I would quite happily point it out. Dortmund have stated for days that he is our most dangerous player and promptly heavily marked him out of the match. The only time he started getting room was when Santi came on and started causing problems.
Is it just me or is our home support fuckin useless..probably the reason why our away form is so much better
the fans and players alike gave Dortmund too much respect…we were the dominant team for the majority night and three points should have been ours.
Backing an away win at the westfalenstadion!! COME ON ARSENALL!!!
As much as I like szcesny, I was really disappointed by him today.
First goal given the eyes. Second goal no chance. Have to admit outfield players were of it today. There goalie made a mistake a goal line clearance and Santi smashing the bar was what we were restricted to.
Dortmund was better for most of the game… Its a wake up call.. and we’ll use it to bounce back and tear apart Liverpool and ManUtd…
Have to say you home fans are absolute shit outsang by the away fans? and you let the ref off easy.
fucking need you as the 12th man.
Easy enough to say from the armchair, I sung my heart out thank you. The Dortmund fans came with a drum (that didn’t shut up) and came to sing for 90 minutes straight. I came to actually watch the game and support my team and sometimes there are lulls in the match. When it’s tense, it goes quiet. If you went to matches you’d know that. There are natural dynamics in a game’s atmosphere unless you’ve come with the express intention to not shut up for the whole match. The home support was actually quite decent tonight and the atmosphere… Read more »
Looks like their fans were fitter than us too!
Not criticizing you as you were part of the much larger group, but in general our fans tend to get too tense. Rarely do we create the atmosphere we did vs Barca or daresay even Napoli.
The entire game I kept wondering – We need our own drums! They’re pretty awesome and intimidating.
Armchair or no, if we are controlling the reverse fixture in dortmund and playing them off the park, would you expect to see a silent and pondering dortmund stadium. Thats the point anyway.
I think neither referee nor players can be blamed. Dortmund played well, as much as I think draw is a fair result, we should congratulate them for winning this match.
Dortmund worked hard, but they were nothing special. Starting tentatively we needlessly lost possession a number of times early on allowing them to make themselves at home. By the time we were mugged on the break in second though we had become the better side. Very frustrating loss.
Tonight we really missed Walcott.. Hopefully the players wouldn’t worry too much and get on – good time to have Crystal Palace!
Thought we missed out and out wingers tonight, in general. Grosskreutz wasn’t tracked at all and was eventually going to do something. Dortmund knew where to exploit us and it paid off for them even if their goal was against the run of play.
Otherwise, we outplayed them for the majority of the 2nd half. Once Ozil started sticking out wide, the right side opened up. Definitely agree Walcott’s pace could have made a big difference against Hummels and Subotic.
Not the refs fault. We had an off night but still came back gallantly. I’m sure the lads will look at that second goal and know they could have worked harder getting back. That’ll fire us up for the return league and coming league games for sure. COYG.
Well, that brought me back down to earth. No shame to losing to a counter attack, but hopefully we bounce back quickly.
Ref ruled out a perfectly legit goal & cost us the game!
Yeah he was terrible. And lewandowski should have been off for that elbow.
Wish Sagna had played better. In a way our first half took the cue from him. He didn’t play particularly well in my opinion
They did stop when he incorrectly blew the whistle.
So this is what losing feels like… I don’t like it.
It wasn’t THAT long ago
I’ll say it… Lewandowski should have been off.
Weird one. Red or nothing.
But life goes on..
How was lewandowski still on the pitch? elbow in face of kozzer right infront of the ref too. oh right we again got a cunty ref.
did not deserve to lose!
In the end, they beat us but were not a better side. We started too slowly, but grew into the game. Looked the better team at the end (despite the goal).
What I don’t get about the lewandowski incident with Kos is I didn’t thing there was any middle ground. Either its a collision: nothing to see here; move right along. Otherwise its a straight red.
Bad day, move on.
Not our day…
Bang on
Difficult group even Dortmund lost, we’ll be top of the group! COYG!
Well this game was always going to be decided by details. Dortmund just that bit more tactically astute in the end. It’s a shame, could have gone either way!
Not sure that getting a goal from a bad mistake by Ramsey, then scoring on the counter by a player who probably have see a red made Dortmund more tactically astute. Yes, they caused us problem in the first half by pressing and denying us space, but that’s usually the book on playing against Arsenal.
Don’t let Dortmund’s lack of chances mislead you, they were waiting for a chance to execute a counter attack like that all match. The little details… I really think we missed Flamini tonight. But like I said, it could have gone either way. I’m sure the lads will bounce back 🙂
Wiltsheres lack of positional disipline payed a part as well, stunted our whole midfield.
AW get the award for the most obvious substitution. Couldnt have come sooner.
Forget this loss aand move on. We were very lethargic compared to Dortmund, who werent great either.
Tactically astute in making us think they were settling for a draw and catching us with our pants down.
Fuck the ref. Fuck football. Fuck everything. #Wengerout
How in the hell can you want Wenger out, one loss and your on his back! I dont know who i hate more spurs or ‘fans’ like you. (obviously spurs but still, F You)
He’s a tool dont mind him. he blames the ref for the loss then again goes for Arsene, make up your mind!
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define%3Asarcasm&oq=define%3Asarcasm&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.5332j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8
Have an up vote for obvious sarcasm.
thumbs up for pessimism 😀
It looks like we are needing some wingers out there. So many centrally minded players who aren’t used to the wing. Example of that is when Sagna marauds forward, an experienced winger would track back for him. That didn’t happen and we were caught out by Lewandowski. Maybe instead of spending big money on a forward, Wenger should get a top class winger. Or get Gnabry more playing time.
If anybody wants me I’ll be digging a hole to throw myself into. Depressed.
Better cover up the hole when you are down there.
Beaten by the better team. Hands down. Sorry, just being honest.
No we weren’t. Apart from their goals, one from an Arsenal mistake and one from a cheating cunt, they did nothing all game. We had a legitimate goal ruled out, one cleared off the line and a lot more chances that them. Sorry, just being honest.
I remember we had a a goal disallowed, a shot cleared off the line and we hit the bar. we should not have conceded the first goal either. Poor that from Ramsey. Hope he continues to develop by cutting out these kind of mistakes
And they shouldn’t concede our first goal either, what’s your point?
His point was nothing between the teams in performance and they are the best team we have played this season so don’t write us off just yet.
What? Which game did you watch?
The first half, where it looked like most of the Arsenal team had never played together. Sagna was just plain bad, Ramsey was poor or gifting them a goal, Wilshere was trying to hard to do it himself, and Rosicky was poor. Giroud probably the best forward player on the pitch. The second half was different, but Dortmund always looked more mature, and more dangerous.
It was a bad day and I hope they can put in a performance at Dortmund.
and, I don’t think Lewandowski should have seen red for fouling Kos, in my view it was not intentional
Our lack of wide-players was definitely felt tonight.
Let’s stay positive, though – once we have at least one of our wingers fit our team will likely continue to push on.
COYG
Lack of concentration cost us this game. We may not be exposed by smaller teams but bigger teams will pounce on any carelessness.
Yes, defensively we’ve been a little suspect all season long, admirably concealed by Flamini most of the time
Harsh that one. A few weeks back there was a wide opinion outside the Emirates that Napoli were going to wipe the floor with Arsenal. We held our own against a very good team tonight. We will progress.
Ramseys worst game since i cant remember. A fatigued Ozil is not an effective Ozil
We missed Flamini…
Fuck you Lewandowski! Fuck Bayern and come to Arsenal and maybe I’ll like you again.
We have seen this before, high pressure and we are in trouble.
We missed Flamini a lot!!! Why dont we a back up for?
Agreed, but Mikel was very very good.
He was, but Ramsey (lol) who played were MA8 would have played didnt play aswell as he should have, therefore we missed flamini
Arteta was brilliant. Flamini would have struggled to circulate the ball under high pressure.
Dortmund were the better team, we came out too slow at the start, in contrast to the Napoli game.
If Mozart’s or Cazorlas shot then we’d have the 3 points
Can’t I ask 2 questions?
1. How does the Giroud chant go? From home in Australia I just sing LA LA LA LA giroouuuuddddddd
2. What’ does boilk mean? Blogs always says it
1. na na na na naa naa na naaa, giroud (tune of hey jude)
2. “i’m hungover”
3. we got robbed a little bit i think.
You should listen to Hey Jude by some band called The Beatles, it’s pretty nice
woops sorry about the spelling, it was 7am when I wrote it :/
Well, that was a undeserved win if I ever saw one. So much good play from us in the 2nd half, and just to see them run away with it all. And that hurts even more given that Lewandowski should not have been anywhere near the pitch at that point in time. How the heck does an elbow straight to the face result in a yellow card? Either it is unintentional, and he gets nothing. Or it is intentional and he is sent off. There is no in-between in my mind. Completely miserable by the ref, but in the end… Read more »
unintentional but dangerous play? is that in-between?
Intention don’t matter. Dangerous play = red anyway
Bitterly dissappointing result but it’s positive that we were outplaying them up until they scored. Still, that’s a wake-up call for some of the players and many of the fans. Against the top teams in Europe you don’t get the time you do against the bottom sides in the premiership.
Despite the ref and whatnot, we need a keeper who can keep us in the game, we need an experienced keeper that szcesny can learn from
Ohh really? You blame him for getting hopelessly exposed by the people in front of him.? Who would you want? Joe Hart? He has made more mistakes this season than szcz did! To me he didn’t do anything wrong today..! The first goal was a weird shot if you saw it properly!
Its just one defeat.. get on with it and hope we come back stronger like we always do!
I almost forgot what its like to lose and it hurts especially when we didn’t deserve it
The worst of it all is probably having to listen to the minority of idiots who can’t wait to slag the team off.
You can’t say we played badly but in games like this you need to take your chances and have a fair ref. I don’t think we deserved less than a point. But we lost, hope we recover quickly. COYG!
First decent team and we shit ourselves? Let’s hope it’s a one off. We looked nervous, a bunch of players had a very bad day, including Ramsey after quite some time.
Congrats to Dortmund, they outplayed us completely and their tactics worked perfectly.
First decent team? We’ve beaten Sp*rs, Marseille and Napoli already this season, cave-dweller. And “they outplayed us…”? What match did you have on TV? There were times when they had 10 men behind the ball. We had loads of good chances on goal, a shot cleared off the line, a legit goal disallowed, an attempt that hit the crossbar, and even a blatant elbow on Koscielny that could’ve seen red. We poured men forward in search of a winner and they hit us on the break, that’s all. Sucker punch and out. Hurts, but we’ve got to pick ourselves up… Read more »
By decent I meant top, thought it was fairly obvious, apparently not. And apparently you know very little of tactics or you weren’t watching very closely. They pressed us for the first 35 minutes to the point that we couldn’t chain 3 successive passes, they got a goal, probably wanted two, but alright. After that, they just dropped back, let us have the ball to knock around 40 yards from their goal and back and forth to Koscielny, Per and Szczesny, handing us “control” of the game, which is basically lots of possession that amounts to nothing, and hit us… Read more »
Some of those points are so pathetic I’ve realized the worst part about this defeat is ‘fans’ like you who’re waiting to lay into the team after a loss they didn’t really deserve. #Shame
We were the better team tonight and a referee has cost us what the fuck was wrong with the Ramsey goal and how has lewandovski not gone the ref was looking straight at it fucking bottler!
Well, Can’t win them all.. that’s all I got to say.
Tactical knockout for Klopp. He identified and attacked our defense to midfield passing, forcing us to kick the ball up and lose it. And when we got it upfront they were quicker and stronger. Our players didn’t really seem to care for this one didn’t they? We need something in Dortmund now if we want to qualify.
Lets not disappear into Klopp over this. Sure they played a sensible game, but we could have as easily won despite having a stinker of a first half.
For his goal how do you not mark the main man?
Anyway we looked better with Cazorla in the team, ramsey had a game to forget. A woeful crystal palace side ver the weekend is just what we need.
oh and Aubemayyamayangan’g can run….
I actually though Arteta played really well and Flamini was not as badly missed as i thought, poor from Ramsey today and I cant remember saying that in a while. Hope Jack is fit for the bench on saturday, would bring him on for ozil when we are 5-0 up.
We couldn’t get the ball! We were nervous defensively without Flamini and were just not incisive enough in the final third. Dortmund played well. But it was an off night for us in truth. Every team has them.
Not as bad as the scoreline suggests
Holy Shit! We’re just about as good as B.D!
I mean seriously we’re right in there.
Ok so this was a loss but let me tell you, on the back of that performance, I’m ready for us to play anybody!
Fookin Bring ’em!
shite, unlike last season where we were thrashed by Schalke and Bayern (once), this time we really should have won the game and we were all over them.
Another difference here is that, this is nothing but a loss and not a crisis at all. No one wants to see heads rolling because we actually played well. bloody hell, Santi should have got that one in though.
Dortmund had come with a game plan & kept Ozil quite & it worked, better tactics won them the game in the end
on the bright side, we won at the allianz arena last season. it’s not far fetched to say will put on an absolute banger when we play them away
Seeing the replay it did not look like Lewandowski had any intent with the elbow.
We can’t make excuses, we were far from our best today. Yes we had a good spell towards the end of the second half but Dortmund stop us playing our game for the majority of the match.
Our entire midfield (with the exception of Arteta) were poor and we gave the ball away constantly.
We are a lot better than this, I really hope we bounce back and destroy them in Germany.
We were at home, and although we shaded the possession we created very little. In Fairness so did they, but for me they always looked more dangerous. Klopp won this win fair and square. It hurts but it’s true.
A draw would have been fair. Dortmund started well but we got stronger the longer the game went on only to get sucker punched late on.
As much as I love Wilshire, he shouldn’t be in the team ahead of Carzola. He wasn’t great today, then again neither was Ozil or Ramsey. Carzola was looking very bright when he came on and Giroud was awesome throughout.
Ozil was tired and klop knew that and tactically marked ozil every time he got the ball with 2-3 players on him, we lacked wingers in this game desperately to stretched the game more on the wings and make space for ozil even blind man saw when cazorla come on on the wing instantly there was more space for ozil and good combination in the second half. But want thing I don’t understand is why in the last 15 min everybody pushed forward like we were losing 1-0 when we got a draw and that would have leave dortmund on… Read more »
Ozil was tired???? What makes you say that? Its October, not April, thats no excuse. Hes a fantastic player but he had a bad day. End of story.
We’re still Top of the League right??
Arsenal: 6
Dortmund: 6
Napoli: 6
Holy shit!
Hate to say it, but overall a deserved win, even though Ramsey’s goal was incorrectly dissallowed! Besides that it was an off-day from pretty much everyone, which dortmund took advantage of.. Dissapointing to say the least, but let’s bounce back with a win come saturday! COYG!
Dortmund pressing was awesome. I didnt care much about ours because knew we were saving energy for the last 20 mins sprint but leaving ourselves open for counter attack and conceding was disappointing. Could have been more if their right back had delivered crosses like for the winning goal throughout the game.
He’s a tool dont mind him. he blames the ref for the loss then again goes for Arsene. make up your mind!
Could people just for once stop blaming everybody else for a game that we didn’t play well? Yes, there were some bad decisions from the ref but it’s no excuse when we played like we did for the first 60 minutes of the game. I was furious that we didn’t respond more agressively coming out from halftime. That said, of course it’s a blow to concede when we’re actually starting to create momentum, but we have noone to blame but ourselves. Football is ALSO bad ref decisions and bad luck, but we should have played far better and thereby minimized… Read more »
Can‘t blame them too much.but that was a really flat performance.pretty disapointed, the crystal palace game can‘t come too early.
Did’ent deserve to lose, we miss flamini protecting the defence,let’s get back on track the weekend and put this defeat behind us
Serge…
Boilk is an alcoholic fuelled sicky burp (or actual sickness) – not 100% sure, but it normally comes after much alcohol!
And Giroud’s song is to the tune of ‘hey jude’, by the cock weasel Paul McCartney.
Got to get a result in Germany now. Thought we were unlucky, if Cazorla’s shot had gone in…
Also, could have done with Theo tonight.
And, I think Lewandowski looks like Vernon Kay. But he is a prick.
Dortmund pressed really well. The just didn’t give us time to do much with the ball, especially in the first half. No other team we have played until now this season has pressed this much. It was quite telling and hence the creativity was gone. Ramsey especially was hardly allowed to create.
But, it was a tough game, and this is what European football is all about. Quality opposition of the kind whom you wouldn’t be typically playing in the league.