What went wrong against FC Porto
Arsenal faced off against FC Porto away in Portugal for the first game of the round of 16 in The Champions League last night and walked away losers after a 1-0 loss and a late winner from Galeno in the dying minutes of extra time. A very disappointing loss for the Gunners after being on a 5 game winning streak and had recently been looking at their very best. Here’s a rundown of what I think went wrong and what we should have done differently.
For the start of the game Arsenal looked to lack a lot of urgency and unlike recent games, we didn’t look fluid or ready to go. Arsenal are the type of team that show you very early what type of game were going to see and it looked shaky from the get-go. We had no fire in our belly’s and after an early yellow card to Declan Rice, it stunted his play, and against a team like Porto who dominate and love to play through the midfield. It was an early issue we really didn’t need. He will now have to play a very restricted game at home, being a yellow card away from missing the next round.
Arsenal failed to get a shot on target for the first time in 2 years and looked a shell of the team we’ve seen recently. Credit to Porto because they played to their strengths and made it very hard for us to create chances and were good at constricting our play. The game was very physical, with a big number of 36 fouls throughout the game.
For me, the selection was wrong and Jorginho should have started the match in the middle, giving us more stability and experience to draw from. Having both Havertz and Trossard on at the same time, makes sense against “lower league” sides but it didn’t seem to have the same effect against Porto, with Trossard being the most restricted I’d seen him in an Arsenal shirt. Arteta only made one change which makes me question the depth we had going into the game and with plenty on the bench, I’m not sure why he only made one substitute throughout the game.
As the game went on and the minutes started to dwindle, we looked like we were happy to go home with a draw and the lack of urgency going forward was a key factor to why I think they scored and we switched off. We’ve left ourselves with a lot to do at home and with a clear plan of how to play against us, Porto are in the driving seat.
Hopefully we can bounce back in three weeks’ time and bring a fuller squad to the table, with plenty of big names missing, hopefully we can start to bring them all back in the next few weeks.
What’s your thoughts Gooners? What went wrong for you?
Daisy Mae
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