By Boris Mellor
November 4 2010

Yes immature does sum it up, especially the immature defending of Gael Clichy. The bloke is increasing becoming a liability; he seems incapable of defending down the line. Soon there will be more forwards queuing to come down the left flank than punters queuing for the 168 during an underground workers strike.

Every time Walcott scores a brilliant goal, I don’t mean the bog standard ones, in the CL the team go on and lose. It was a wonderful goal, and indeed very reminiscent of Henry. Once he scored you couldn’t be blamed for thinking here we go, however his goal was the signal for the team to lose shape and forget about defending.

The midfield lost all bite and failed to protect the back four, Fabianski, and the posts, saved numerous shots, but you just knew that Shakhtar would score, or that we would score for them. Bendtner was listless, and Rosicky ineffective. Eastmond looked well out of his depth.

             The new Super Mac

Karma

I notice that Eastmond wasn’t that keen to claim his goal as he was his non-existent goal at Newcastle. Great header mate, and a candidate for the Diaby silly own goal memorial award. Perhaps that will teach him not to copy Malcolm McDonald goal celebrations in future. After that Shakhtar controlled the game and I would prefer to forget about the sight of two thousand naked beer guts undulating in synchronised jubilation in the November Fog.

Wenger blames the team but must also blame himself

Yes they were complacent, but then so was he. Why did he take so long to substitute Bendtner? And when he did it was with Vela!! Did you see the terror in Shakhtar eyes? Neither did I. I can’t remember the bloke ever scoring an important goal, when it was all to play for. He is a lightweight who wouldn’t get a sniff at a place in the Man U or Chelsea squads.

The only player who might have improved things, Chamakh, wasn’t brought on until the 73 minute! He did improve things, but it was too little too late. By then the opposition was rolling around the floor disrupting the rhythm of the game protecting their two one lead, and who can blame them?  This was an incompetent display by Wenger, he too was complacent, true he had injuries, but he could have strengthened the line up far earlier than he did.

He may have learnt that a carling cup team can beat a weakened Newcastle team, but an away game against a full strength team in the Ukraine, needs different tactics.

What silver lining?

Firstly 9 points and 15 goals aren’t bad for four games, hardly the time for cutting wrists. Secondly it’s good to see that Wenger is prioritising the league and not the CL, at least for the moment. Of course it would have been best to have finished the job ASAP, and we better hope this defeat doesn’t become the start of the November lull.