The Gunners defensive problems came back to haunt them as they gave up a three goal lead to settle for a 3-3 draw with Belgian champions Anderlecht.
They were expected to ease past the Belgium club and were 2-0 up at half-time thanks to goals from Mikel Arteta and Alexis Sanchez. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s strike just before the hour mark looked to have sealed the win but Anderlecht had other ideas as they scored three goals in the last 30 minutes to earn a point at the Emirates.
Although they have defensive injuries, it is criminal for Arsenal to allow a three goal lead to slip in the Champions League. They looked tentative in the latter stages and Aleksandar Mitrovic took full advantage to head home the equalizer in the 90th minute, prior to two goals from Anthony Vanden Borre, the first of which was offside.
Wenger was critical of his defense and believes a poor defensive showing cost them. According to Daily Mail, he said, “Maybe we underestimated them subconsciously and we got punished – in the Champions League you need to be at the right mental level and we got punished because we were not. You have to give them credit – they tried until the end.”
He added, “We had a poor defensive performance from the first minute to the 90th today.We were also punished because of bad luck – the first goal was clearly offside – but defensively our performance was not good enough. We thought the job was done.”
“We dropped off too much in the second half and didn’t go into the challenges any more – then you are always open. We stopped winning the challenges and dropped off. We didn’t stop the crosses, we didn’t stop the long balls. In the first half we were outnumbered sometimes but in the second half it was bad defending.”
Well the manager did not mince his words and clearly feels the defending was sub-standard vs Anderlecht even though they did concede a goal which was well off-side.