After battling through their three biggest rivals that are also three of the best teams in the world, you might think Arsenal would have been tempered for victory against a team like Porto. You would be wrong.
Some will say that Arsenal deserved to win. Captain Fabregas told an interviewer that "we were controlling the game, we were having chances" until the second goal, but that is questionable to say the least. As a nerd, Champion's League games are wonderful because of a wonderful invention: the UEFA Match Centre. Among other things, the soccer nerd can view the most detailed passing stats around. A sampling:
68% overall passing
71% short passing
71% medium passing
50% long passing
Well that's not so bad, Arsenal completed the majority of their passes, did they not? It is for me. Think about it: for every ten passes attempted toward relatively close players, the average Arsenal player gave the ball away on about three attempts. Those are unacceptable statistics for a world-class team in any game, especially in a CL draw that has to go down as one of the most generous we could have gotten. And this isn't even to speak of the defense, which, by Arsenal's standards, could have been worse.
Once again, a brand new slew of little injuries brought us our 1,562nd never-before-seen lineup of Fabianski, Sagna, Campbell, Vermaelen, Clichy, Denilson, Fabregas, Diaby, Rosicky, Nasri, Bendtner. With the lineup came a ton of talking points. With Denilson instead of Song in the XI, would we have a disastrous time in the midfield again? How would the rather like-and-like pairing of Campbell and Vermaelen work out, and what would Campbell bring to the team? Would Bendtner take the opportunity to really establish himself without Arshavin? Will Fabianski make a claim for the #1 shirt?
The tone of bad passing was set at the very beginning, when Denilson began to look like his disastrous self by sliding in a funky back-pass behind Sol Campbell, forcing the old man to track back and pull off a brilliant sliding tackle from behind, before promptly turning around and screaming at a very different Arsenal than he remembers. And indeed, after a failed counter-attack, some poor defense on the left led to another chance for Porto, which Campbell and Vermaelen did well to block. And once again, Campbell looked ahead and bit his team's head off--and I thought, isn't it great to have him back? His days with Arsenal were just a bit before my time, but the contrast between his fiery general's mentality and the rest of Arsenal's half-disappointed, half-angry-with-themselves reaction to poor play was very, very refreshing (I'm talking to you, Cesc!).
It might have had an effect, as well, because for most of the first half, Arsenal had not begun to pass poorly or defend poorly most of the time. The team had the great majority of time on the ball, and reached Porto's box quite well. Players like Diaby and, especially, Rosicky showed consummate possession skills and pulled off several perfectly-weighted passes to demonstrate an excellent sense of intent.
A bright start, however, was not good enough to prevent Porto from scoring one of the most unnecessary goals you will ever see. One thing that Arsenal struggled with the entire game was defending a pair of very quick wingers, Varela and Pereira (I belive that was the latter's name). Both Sagna and Clichy were struggling keeping up with their players on the wing. And in the eleventh minute, Clichy found himself out-skilled by Varela, who put in a fairly wayward cross for what should have been an easy-peasy take from Fabianski, who was under no pressure. But alas, he had come out expecting a ball more accurately targeted on the striker's head. The ball flew much closer to the goal, and he dived to get back, only to punch the ball into his own net--and like that, Arsenal is down a goal, due to the second keeper's own-goal of the season. Only Arsenal.
But with that out of the way, the offense went right about its business, and equalized in no time from a rare goal from a corner, and boys and girls, this one was no scrappy set-piece goal. Fabregas flighted the ball perfectly toward the near-post. Vermaelen rose above two Porto players to deftly scrape the ball with the top of his head toward the far-post, where Rosicky nailed it with his forehead right, smack in front-and-center of the goal. Campbell had made the run, lowered his head, and made no mistake. People will look at the stats: "Sol Campbell, with his head, from two yards, from a corner. Not really Arsenal-like", and it wasn't. It was more like Brazil in full-on Samba-style, with a great cross, and three excellent headers--four players, four touches, one goal. You could see it in the celebration from the team, especially Sol's jumping-around like a teenage King Kong, that they knew what a rare goal that was. Just like that, it's 1-1, and the run-of-play was definitely favorable.
But eventually, the giveaways began, and they continued through the whole game. It typically looked like this: Arsenal would reach the box and just not find the final ball, in forgiveable fashion. But then, Porto would find the midfield, spread the field from side-to-side, and defenders would cut out a pass, but the pokes would go right back to a Porto player. This kind of thing is forgiveable a few times, but watch the last 25 minutes of the first half and count how many times this happened.Or, certain defensive players would come forward too early, miss a tackle, and turn on the fire-alarm for the defenders that stayed in position. One of these players was Denilson, but the other, more egregious offender was Vermaelen. A good Arsenal-friend of mine will hang me for this, but Vermaelen caused the team a lot more trouble than Campbell, and he has a history of precisely this kind of mistake. He challenges for every ball, which sounds good in a 5-on-5 pick-up game, but constitutes serious rashness at this level. Vermaelen comes out too early, too far up, and often creates unfavorable situations this way. Sometimes, he forces himself to chase the ball way, way out of position. Even when he wins a header, he often heads it in the wrong direction, sometimes right on toward our own goal. Some people love Vermaelen, and I think he is very good and generally very solid, but these errors have led to goals in other games (see 3-0 Man United). Call me crazy, but I am not so quick to dismiss Grampa Sol, and I thought his discipline really showed in this match.
Then, of course, Campbell committed that most ignominious error to begin the second half and put the game away for Porto. As a poor over-the-top ball came in from the midfield toward our goal, Fabianski came forward to take it as Sol chased the ball, with a Porto attacker just behind him. Campbell touched the ball, promptly began to look panicked, and Fabianski picked up the ball for an indirect free-kick, and Campbell looked ab-so-lutely scuttered. It only got worse, however, when the referee, Martin Hansson, after having taken the ball from Fabianski and presumably giving Arsenal the idea that he would allow a wall to be set, dropped the ball for Porto and allowed a simple pass and a simple tap-in against our team the ball-watchers.
Sounds a bit harsh, but that is life in the fast lane, I'm afraid. As a rule, I do not crow about refereeing decisions. You can count on the referee to make the right decision most of the time, but sometimes, they make a hash of it, and teams have to take the good with the bad. Incorrect offside decisions, free-kick confusion, and yellow/red card controversies have worked in Arsenal's favor in the past, sometimes decisively. This time, it worked decisively against Arsenal's favor, and so be it.
I blame the players, primarily Fabianski, once again. Not to defend Campbell, if it already seems that I am overly favorable toward him, but his touch did look a bit like the mistake of an older fellow who does not have the fleet-of-foot he once had. Fabianski, second-choice (third-choice?) or not, has to know to not pick that ball up. React quickly, and shank it out of bounds to the right, and you can scream your head off at Campbell for a dumb mistake (wouldn't that feel good?). But to see the touch and just pick it up is just nakedly poor goalkeeping.
It is hard, for once, to judge different players individually, because most players had very similar kinds of games. On the bright side, several players looked extremely energetic, and genuinely looked like they wanted to win. Diaby was running his be-hind off, freight-training the ball off attackers and running off to start an attack of his own. Nasri and Rosicky looked more energetic and generally quick in their play than I can rmeember seeing them, with Mr. Clean looking like he was about to break a sweat with his turning on the ball, and Rosicky pulling off the most purposeful, quickly-taken passes on the team.
On the other hand, absolutely everyone on the team missed too many passes, including these three, all over the field. Fabregas was particularly surprising, espcially after Porto scored their second goal, with not a few one-touches missing their target. To his credit, his set-piece crosses were mostly quite good, and smaller defenses would surely have been victimized. Without Song, the midfield lost its reference point, and Denilson looking very ill-composed. Bendtner looked clumsy, to say the least, and balanced a few moments of great vision and passing with hilarious moments of stumbling over the ball, and missing shots, and such (most telling is his shooting stats--four taken, three off target, one on--that was a backwards-header served in by Fabregas on a set-piece, and was almost certainly intended to be a flick for another player).
Sagna, it must be said, had one of the toughest games in literally months. Constantly caught out-of-position, he struggled through the whole game to catch up to his man and block crosses, even allowing him to dance around the ball at one moment in the second half as a sort of brag. Clichy had an equally bad start, but he picked up the pieces with many well-timed tackles, and I am confident he will turn into our mainstay on the left very soon. However, both of them just looked incapable of tackling the ball anywhere but to a different Porto attacker. Both of them were exploited more often as the game reached on.
At the end of the day, Arsenal cannot claim to have asked very many questions at all of Porto's defense, and in the last 20-30 minutes, if Arsenal had ever dominated possession, Porto certainly evened it up to a cool 46-54 by the final whistle. Indeed, at that point, Arsenal failed to string two or three passes together. Substitutes Walcott, Vela, and Eboue came on to very little effect. Walcott's 22+ minutes can be summed up by his first touch: receives the ball in-position, races off, only to be pushed to the ground with a totally-fair tackle. Both Vela and Eboue came on too late to make any difference--though Eboue had two very good moments of getting forward and putting in crosses that just make you think a bit.
So what have we learned? Once again, injuries are the ultimate downfall of Arsenal. Though Campbell's grit and discipline were quite refreshing, though unsustainable, you cannot envision Almunia giving up those two goals, or the same result with Song and Arshavin on the field. This week, it is Diaby the newest member of the physio's table (again) with a medial ligament tear. I never like to hear "ligament" in an injury description, so unfortunately it could be a lengthy lay-off for one of our better players. Second, Arsenal still does not respond well to disappointment. Arsenal looked resigned after the second goal, and played much worse all over the field. Indeed, the prospects for the return leg could have been much worse, as Porto eventualy turned into the better team.
Arsenal has it all to do against a team they should be able to beat, and handily so at home, in a bit less than two weeks. Next is Sunderland, and after the last four matches, regardless of results, it should be eminently win-able.
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