Dortmund Disaster: Tactics or Players to blame?

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So with a first competitive defeat of the season out of the way, it seems only fair that we have our first post-game autopsy. What went so horribly wrong that we were out-played on almost every front by a Dortmund team lacking nearly half of their starting XI?

Dortmund destroyed Arsenal in midweek, so who was to blame for the awful performance?

1) Injuries

Firstly it is important to address the fact that we were also suffering from injuries. However that was made so much worse by the fact it now highlights how little defensive cover we have in defence. I know that Wenger doesn’t like rotation amongst his defence, but giving players a little bit of game-time before we’re down to only 3 defenders on a Champions League match might have been nice. We’re also looking at a long term problem here, with Debuchy injured, how do we cope if one of the centre-backs gets injured?

Too little activity in the transfer market for this part of the field has let us down. Not replacing Vermaelen was criminal.

2) Players

Quite simply the players didn’t perform. I know it’s tough to ask players to perform as soon as they’ve signed for a new team but when you’re through on goal it doesn’t matter what team you’re playing for you have to hit the target, Mr Welbeck. Dortmund going 1-0 down at home and we’d have been able to play on the counter and control the game. As such we were too open and it exposed everything that was wrong tactically, which I’ll come to later.

Ozil has not been himself this season. Get him off the pitch whilst he sorts his head out because something is not right at the moment.