I'm losing count of the number of ridiculous goals we concede

Results

Date	Time	C	Opponent	F	A	R	S
17 Feb	7:45 PM	CL	Fc Porto (A)	1	2	Lost

Once again, Arsenal's defending has been shown to be an absolute joke after a 2-1 defeat to Porto.

Both sides looked pretty average on the night, but it was the gifts handed out by Arsenal at the back that allowed the home side to take a lead with them to the Emirates in a fortnight.

Gaël Clichy was beaten far too easily for the first goal, which allowed Lukasz Fabianski to do what any ordinary Arsenal goalkeeper does these days, and make a meal out of something which should be simple.

The second goal was something else really. Although the referee played his part, there's little point in criticising others when we get ourselves into these situations in the first place.

Campbell shepharded the ball back towards Fabianski. There was no real danger. Sol probably could've taken a touch and brought the ball out of defence himself, or just given the goalkeeper a bit more room. That was indecisive play to start with. It seemed to happen quite slowly, and I wasn't really sure what Sol's intentions were.

When I saw it the first time I didn't think it had actually touched his foot; the contact was minimal and it was obviously not intended, which is where I blame the referee for doing his best to make the headlines again in his first match since he let Thierry Henry get away with a blatantly deliberate handball.

Still, once Campbell had touched it with his feet, Fabianski can't assume he'll get away with picking the ball up. That was poor from him. It was also poor to hand the ball straight back to the opposition. Players find all sorts of ways of wasting time and making things awkward for their opponents. He could've held onto the ball or thrown it aside.

It must be said though, that we were also very much lacking in terms of attack. Apart from a well-worked goal, I can only remember one shot on target from us, early in the first half.

Porto didn't create much either, so we SHOULD be able to beat them in the second leg and go through, but that's a big should.

Wenger cannot keep ignoring how easily outmuscled we are by almost everyone we play. It was evident again tonight that we are a small and weak side. An average team like Porto kept us quiet, simply by roughing us up a bit.

Fabregas said after the match that our heads dropped after the second goal. Look at how we performed against Villa, United and Chelsea in what we knew would be some of our biggest games of the season. We're not good enough under pressure, and we've heaped a lot of pressure onto ourselves after gifting two stupid goals to a very ordinary side.

Every time we find a new and exciting way to totally shoot ourselves in the foot defensively, I tell myself, "it can't possibly get worse than this", and I try to take comfort from that with this Champions League tie. Porto will have enough trouble scoring against us in the second leg anyway, and surely they won't get another goal like either of the two tonight. We'll also hopefully be boosted by the returns of Song and Arshavin, both badly missed tonight.

So that's why I think we'll go through, but it doesn't change the glaring problems in this team.

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