Arsenal faced Borussia Dortmund after a good outing against Manchester City. A very weak Arsenal showed that the team is in need of desperate help defensively here is the report. In the previous four years, Arsenal have had to wait until the last-16 of the Champions League to discover themselves out of their depth and ultimately outplayed by an opponent who is just too bloody good for them. It will have been a shock to experience that uncomfortable feeling in mid-September.
This Borussia Dortmund team will beat many good sides at the Westfalenstadion this season, but then Arsenal are not Freiburg or Paderborn, they are a club with pretensions to make in-roads into the latter stages of a competition they have never won. It is early days yet, but Arsene Wenger will assess the response of his player to the challenge the German side presented tonight and worry that it was simply not good enough.
The goals came three minutes apart, either side of half-time, the first a brilliant effort from the Italian striker Ciro Immobile who out-ran and flummoxed Arsenal’s defence all on his own. Then Aubamayeng exchanged passes with Kevin Grosskreutz and took advantage of another ill-advised sprint out the area from Szczesny to add the second.
There are five more group games to go and this one was away from home. Yet even so, Arsenal had played two more competitive games this season than their German opposition before tonight and still it was Dortmund who looked the sharper and the better-prepared. Wenger will have to hope that they can overturn this defeat in late-November when the Germans come to London. There are many more twists to the story, but he does not want to contend with another second-place group finish and a potential second round draw against one of the big guns.
Last season, Arsenal seized a victory here with a hard-fought performance built on astute defence and taking their chances when presented. They managed neither this time. Last season’s matchwinner Aaron Ramsey struggled to influence the game at all, while Mesut Ozil was missing – presumed uninterested – out on the right wing. When Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Santi Cazorla came on for those two in the second half, Wenger’s side looked much better for it.
The German side targeted Arsenal’s right flank where the 19-year-old Spanish full-back Hector Bellerin was making his first start for the club. It was a rough ride for the teenager at times, with Kevin Grosskreutz galloping at him in his black boots like the express train to Dusseldorf. On the ball, Bellerin looked comfortable; it was without it and his positioning then that meant he struggled.
Arsenal could not get moving in midfield. As for Ozil, played out on the right wing, it was easy at times in the first half to forget that the German World Cup winner was participating in this game. The best of his team’s chances were developed elsewhere. There was a great run down the left by Kieran Gibbs on 31 minutes and a good cross that Danny Welbeck could not wrest from the air. At the other end, Dortmund tried every way through. Sebastian Kehl broke from deep and slipped the ball right to Aubameyang who shot wide. Bender had a shot saved. And then Arsenal got the breakthrough that presented them with a chance. Welbeck was tackled running onto a throughball, but the ball broke loose to Ramsey who poked it back through to the new £16m striker. Welbeck’s clever break to the right had created the space for the pass, and Ramsey’s ball gave him just Roman Weidenfeller to beat. Unfortunately for him, the striker’s instinct in Welbeck can fail him in these situations and he pulled his shot wide.