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Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction
On a night where a fairly drab 0-0 looked like a reasonable outcome based on performance levels, Arsenal paid the price for 35 seconds of carelessness at the end to go down 1-0 to an injury time Wenderson Galeno goal.
There was very little to be enthused about how we played, but that goal just should not have happened – especially at that stage of the game. Last night was a reminder of just how different the challenge is when you get the knock-out rounds of the Champions League, something we’ll go into more in a bit, but a big part of is game-management. ‘If you can’t win, don’t lose’ sounds a bit trite or obvious, but it was well within our hands to come back to London with a draw. Instead, we were just a bit naive, just a bit careless, and got punished to the max.
It wasn’t like one massive glaring error, we just got scrappy for a few seconds. First, Gabriel took a heavy touch on a routine pass from Saliba, got caught on the ball, and went back to David Raya. His clearance wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good either, allowing Porto to regain possession in our half. Then Declan Rice intercepted but lost his footing slightly. In his attempt to win it back, he squirted the ball back to Porto. To his credit he gets a foot in, the ball goes to Gabriel Martinelli who, trying to be positive I suppose, looks to switch it across field to where Martin Odegaard, Kai Havertz and Bukayo Saka are.
He has to either find Odegaard, or hit with enough power to potentially send Saka in behind. He does neither and Porto have possession again. They play it forward to Galeno, Rice is too deep and doesn’t react to the danger well enough, and from there the finish asks questions of Raya. I’ve seen a lot of discussion, and while I think this goal is a catalogue of errors for which he is probably least culpable, it doesn’t look good for him. It might be positioning, it might be the timing of his leap, or that…
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/02/porto-1-0-arsenal-35-seconds-cost-gunners-a-draw/
Author : arseblog
Publish date : 2024-02-22 07:21:09
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