CHAMPIONS LEAGUE GROUP G
DYNAMO KYIV 1 – 1 ARSENAL

1 – 0 Bangoura (64 pen)
1 – 1 Gallas (88)

Before the match, Arsene took the view that a point would be a good result, a solid grounding upon which to build for the rest of the opening phase of this season’s Champions League. Now it is over, that view is not necessarily holding firm,

The game was a mixture of frustration and relief; frustration because the game should have been over at half-time and relief because we scored with minutes to go…We feel we lost two points

That assessment is not wrong. In the first half, Arsenal’s midfield grabbed control early on and rarely ceded it to their hosts. Yet the feeling persisted that this was not going to be a victory achieved by the wide margin that the chances created in the opening forty-five minutes warranted. The tone for that half, and the evening in general, was set in the opening twenty minutes. van Persie saw and early shot pushed to safety following good approach work; Adebayor should have done better when capitalising on defensive ineptitude only to beat the far post by a marginal distance. Perhaps the worst offender was Cesc, who really should have buried the ball in the back of the net rather than the ‘keeper’s grateful arms, the chance created by van Persie’s pull-back from Adebayor’s cross.

Dynamo emerged from the half-time interval a re-invigorated side and set about earning some scant reward for their first half performance. Certainly they attacked with more purpose in that time but rarely troubled Almunia save for a Bangoura effort that the Spaniard turned onto the woodwork. The penalty when it arrived was typical of the sort given in European games and to home sides. Blackburn supporters are no doubt believing there is some poetic justice in that a defender was co-erced into conceding the spot-kick from a poor position. That Sagna was clearly pulled to the ground by the forward, in a motion that was designed to make it look like a push is irrelevant. In the European tie of yesteryear, Vukojevic would have been called a ‘wily old fox’ by Messrs Jones and Butler, before they chastised him having seen replays.

In conceding the penalty, there were two errors. Firstly, Toure played the offside trap having drifted too close to the goal, moving at the time the ball was struck. It was a split second but his timing was awry. The second was in Sagna’s covering position. Looking along the line, he saw the forward lose Toure and went to cover except he should have moved more goalwards rather than to the back of the player. That does not preclude any criticism of Vukojevic. Quite simply, he conned the referee. Bangoura took his penalty calmly but as he ran up, I cannot have been alone in shouting ‘It’s going to your left Almunia’; sadly the distance between us and the absence of truly interactive television meant that the Arsenal custodian could not hear us all.

Once in front, Dynamo sought to protect their lead, counter-attacking where possible but such was the paucity of their final ball, the chances never emerged. Arsenal meanwhile busied themselves with an active response but failed to really trouble the Dynamo custodian. They – whoever ‘they’ are – say that cheats never prosper. Justice was done when Adebayor fed Walcott on the right. His low, curled cross was helped on by Adebayor to Gallas, both at the far post. A captain’s goal in the final moment and an unlikely top scorer in European Cup competition. Repeat the feat against Porto and we will all be scrambling for the books to find who holds the record for scoring in consecutive games.

Overall, a point is a good start. The gloss is somewhat lost when you consider Dynamo’s team and their record in last season’s competition when they were resoundingly poor. Tactically, they were not a patch on previous sides emerging from the Ukranian capital. Indeed, preventing Arsenal playing by fair means or foul was their sole defensive theory, Theo Walcott’s legs will no doubt bear witness to that this morning.

For Arsenal, there was not much wrong in Wenger’s selection. Only Song came in as a change from Saturday, perhaps precautionary, perhaps to give the midfield a more ’specialist’ central defensive player. Whichever way, Song had a decent game albeit showing some rustiness through lack of action with his club. However, where Wenger changed from his usual beliefs was his substitution. Certainly the introduction of Bendtner for the Cameroonean international added more attacking verve, emphasised by the more robust directness of Eboue for Sagna, bring at times a 3-3-4 attacking formation. Wenger was not keeping much of an eye on Bolton as far as rotating players was concerned.

It was not a vintage performance but nowhere near as bad as some of this morning’s media reports nor those portrayed by Sky, sensationalism robbing them of objectivity. With events off the pitch set to dominate for the next few days, the importance of this point (or the dropping of two) will not be known until the final whistle blows in the Porto game in a fortnight’s time.

’til Tomorrow.