Losing at Olimpiacos? It could have been worse « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

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By Walter Broeckx

Well one thing is fore sure our defeat at Olimpiacos has caused some joy in some parts of the world. Some of the AAA-fans can finally say “I told you so” and tell what a fool our manager is. Well they had to shut up for a while so maybe it is understandable that they are filled with joy now that finally they can say that they are right.

Now I will not say that we played a brilliant game. In fact we didn’t play very well. I think every player who was on the field will feel that way. Some were good and others will have had a bad night with losing a lot of sleep. I hope anyway. Silly mistakes were made. Some players lost their head at times. Some players were thinking that it could be better not to risk any damage and stepped out of some challenges in order to stay fit. The Olimpiacos players were playing to win at all cost and risk and our players were playing to stay fit without risking too much.

But when you look at our team we had 2 players from our current best 11 on the pitch. And the rest were players playing out of position or players who for the moment are not really 100% at their best for various reasons. And we had a few youngsters playing for whom this was a very challenging test.

And so we lost 3-1 against the Greek champions. With what can be described as the best of the rest if we take in account the players who are still out with injury. I think Jenkinson could have done a better job at right back than Djourou. Because Djourou is not a right back and will never be one. But if no one is left to play right back our manager has to switch.

Wenger is of course blamed for the injury that happened to Santos. Okay fair enough but imagine we would have played Miquel and that he would have failed miserably because Miquel is also not a left back but a central defender. I think you could imagine the cry for the manager to be sacked if Miquel would have played and would have caused all kinds of troubles to our own team. Imagine we would have lost with more goals. Then they also would have been asking for blood. Either way it could have gone wrong. And nobody knew before that Santos would get injured or that Miquel played rather decent at left back.

But losing 3-1 at Olimpiacos is not something that hasn’t happened before. Because this season even Dortmund went over to Greece and they went with their full first team and they also lost 3-1 over there.

The main reason for Olimpiacos losing at home against Marseille was due to the fact that their league started later because of all the troubles they had this summer with all kind of problems and scandals coming above water. But our best of the rest got the same result as the best of Dortmund got there.

Some people also blame Wenger for not making the desired changes to the team. But do they realise that after half an hour gone we had to change our keeper so we had only 2 possible substitutes left. And then 5 minutes in to the second half we had to make another change that was not really meant to happen with another injury. So in fact Wenger had only 1 change he could make in this game. So the he should have brought on…… (fill in as you like) looks to me a bit strange. Yes if Fabianski and Santos would have stayed fit I think Wenger would have changed a few other players.

I do think Park would have had his chance up front at some stage. But we were handicapped because of the injuries earlier in the game. Those things happen on a night when it isn’t your night.

So overall things didn’t go our way against a very strong (look at their other home results against real first choice players) and aggressive team. Some players didn’t fancy risking their legs, others will have found out the hard way what it means to play at the highest level (there is no higher level than Champions League). By now they will know that it takes a bit more to get a starting place at Arsenal than what they did yesterday. Those who learn the lesson will step up their game and will get better. Those who are not capable of learning will lose their battle for more starts at Arsenal.

Losing at Olimpiacos with a basically second string team is not a disaster. It is how the players individually will react to this defeat that will be important. Will they have the character to step up their game and reach a higher level? Only the future will tell us. But for god’s sake let us not lose our head over this defeat and saying that we suddenly are a bad team.

I think there are more than enough players that have stayed in London who will be ready this Saturday for a game that is slightly more important than this trip to Greece was.

Oh and a final note we might just notice that it was the first team of Manchester United with their best players lost 2-1 at Basel. And Manchester City is also out of the Champions league after playing all the games with their best players…..

I wonder how the AUU and the ACC will react to this great performance of being able to get in to the Europa League…

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