Arsenal 3 FK Partizan 1
The opposition seemingly already on their winter break Arsene Wenger’s side booked their place in the knockout phase of the Champions League with an eventually comfortable home win. Partizan, who would finish bottom of the group no matter what the outcome, put five across midfield in a tactical decision that on paper was designed to stifle the Gunners but in practice highlighted their own lack of ambition and quality. To some extent it worked, the visitors keeping Arsenal out from open play during the first half, but you always felt it was only a matter of time before the English heavyweights clicked.
Everything was so nearly from Wenger’s men early on. As it often is, they take time to put that killer pass or ball in, with early approach play always threatening and effective. Apart from the van Persie penalty however the home side did not test Vladimir Stojkovic in the visiting goal at all until after the break. There’s no doubt that the award of a spot kick on the half hour was correct and the Dutchman wearing the captain’s armband for the night dispatched it well. Marko Jovanovic will have to learn to only make challenges across an attacker if he is certain of getting something on the ball.
Discussions of defensive frailties have become something of a broken record in commentaries on Arsenal this season, but these were exposed again in Brazilian striker Cleo’s equaliser for the Serbian outfit five minutes after the restart. I don’t rate Koscielny as a player who knows what he is doing when he is dragged out of position; he never looks sure of his ground and has been sent off in such scenarios during matches covered on JC Football previously this season. Squillaci’s deflection on the shot certainly helped it past Fabianski who had had nothing whatsoever to do until that point.
The Gunners rallied and brought on Walcott for the ineffective Arshavin, whose pace changed the game. I thought the Macedonian full back Aleksandar Lazevski impressed, limiting Nasri and Sagna down the right in the first half. After the break however and with a new adversary facing him, he hadn’t any ideas how to deal with it. Jovanovic was again poor defensively with a pathetic headed clearance which Walcott simply chested down and volleyed into the corner past Stojkovic.
Nasri put the game beyond doubt with his twelfth of the campaign the other side of the seventy-five minute mark, but it was the one-two prior to his finish across the keeper between Alex Song and Bendtner that made it. You worry when Fabregas is injured who breaks from midfield and the Cameroonian is not the obvious choice but he has a fantastic engine and showed wonderful footwork to put it on a place for the in-form Frenchman.
It wasn’t vintage Arsenal, but winning the group had been taken out of their hands anyway. Partizan were really quite poor and with two sitting, the other midfield three did almost nothing to aid Cleo who fed off scraps all night long. The final word must go to a great servant of the Serbains Mladen Krstajic who has had a long and successful career, the pinnacle of which was winning the Bundesliga with Bremen and playing for his country at the 2006 World Cup. Now thirty six, Belgrade need to replace him. Experience is one thing, atrocious positioning and lack of legs as a central defender is a recipe for disaster.
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