UEFA Champions League News: Arsenal’s campaign under threat, Braga trash the visitors by 2-0
Arsenal lost their latest group stage match in the UEFA Champions League to Braga by two goals to nil and in doing so they have indeed put their hopes of qualifying for the round of sixteen on a standstill. Arsenal will greave that they were denied a stone
wall penalty by the referee Viktor Kassai when Carlos Vela was fouled by Alberto Rodriguez inside the Braga penalty area but in all reality the Londoners failed to carve out a clear goal scoring opportunity during the match.
Arsenal eventually fell prey to two late counter attacking goals by Braga through their striker, Matheus who made Arsenal pay for not doing enough with the massive amount of possession they had during the encounter.
Wenger said, "We played against a team who refused to play and tried to catch us on the counter attack. They used every single trick in the book to slow the game down. We were not sharp enough to create clear-cut chances. Saturday's result had no knock-on
effect, because I had seven players who did not play, and I had to rest some players.”
He added, “I think we had enough on the pitch to make a goal, but football is like that when the other team focuses not to play. Everybody is free to play the way they like, and they won. We could play 10 matches like that and win eight or nine times, but
tonight was the one we didn't."
Commenting the penalty that Arsenal were denied during the second half of the match, "It is difficult to understand how we did not get a penalty. The five referees is not an answer to the problem. We were caught when Eboue was just down on a bad tackle which
went unpunished. The turning point was the penalty - I still cannot understand how Carlos Vela got a yellow card”.
The Frenchman went onto say “It remains a complete mystery. The referee had some surprising decisions tonight. It is hard to swallow, but now we have to win our last game. The most important thing for us now is to qualify. It is good that Shaktar play against
Braga, but they are the super favorites to win the group."
Wenger said, "We are going through a period where we have bad luck, we had Eboue kicked off the park without any punishment and we also had the penalty turned down. What was the fifth official doing? We have another proof that it is absolutely useless, this
system. Then when we were 10 against 11, we made a mistake at the back, there was a minimum of communication and that's where we were punished."
Speaking about the injuries to Fabregas and Eboue, Arsene went onto say, "Eboue will be out for a while and we will have to asses Fabregas tomorrow. It could be two to three weeks. It is very disappointing because I had a hesitation to play him before the
match started. I took the gamble and it backfired on us."
On the other hand, Domingos Paciencia refused to comment on Wenger’s accusations that his team played dirty. Domingos said, "I don't want to comment, because it is just the personal opinion of the Arsenal manager I haven’t seen the penalty incident on TV,
but before there was an offside, so first should be offside, then no penalty would be allowed for Arsenal. It is very difficult (qualification to the round of 16), but we have to believe we can do it until the very end. It will be a tough game against Shaktar,
but we still feel it is possible."
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