Arsenal: Champions league 1ST leg.

The champions league action was here with us yesterday evening and it was an opportunity for the remaining teams that hadn’t qualified to book their places in the group stages through elimination round that encompasses a home and a way fixtures, various teams across Europe were competing for the few remaining dockets to wi n the big ears trophy.

At the Artuk stadium Arsenal was away to Besiktas and what a mouth watering encounter it was? The balls is at the center and one leg on it was the big number 9 once an arsenal target Demba Ba, it took a slightest touch from..  and the it was Ba chance to let  the volley fly right away from the center  to the goal had it not been the sharp concentration of arsenal stopper sczscesny, it would have gone down the records as the fastest goal in the history of football.

Demba Ba continued to be a thorn in the flesh of arsenal defence and after a few minutes letatr a looped pass was floated to him for him to sting the arms of the arsenal shot stopper, all this time the crowd was doing more harm as the tomenting atmosphere did not help the gunners settle and once an arsenal player was on the ball the noise was deafening, but in the end they surpassed the noises and they tried finding their traditional passing game.

alexis preparing for warm up

 

Alexis had some moment of brilliance and he was a joy to watch once he was talking besiktas defence, up to now where he will be deployed  isn’t clear, we wait on Walcot imminent return to verify that, Giroud had a wonderful pass from sanchez to convert it in but he squandered the chance to put arsenal ahead maybe he is not in the yet in the right shape but the manager showed patience in him to complete the game as he continued marshallinfg their defence throuhgt the evening but a times his touches were poor.

sanchez

Chamberlain coming in later to replace sanchez breathed life into the arsenal side and at the dying minutes he danced his way through the defence and had rasping shot that save for the post the scoreline would have read otherwise.

At the end the result panned out to be 0-0 but an way goal would have been nice on Arsenal side, but the Turkish side have the away advantage if they will have a goal at the emirates come the return fixture.

The pitch was not in good standard and sending off ramsey with ten minutes to go even after it seemed to be a 50-50 sitation in both yellow card attributed to him, the first yellow for example he was returning the favour of his shirt being pulled, he did exactly what had been done to him and it was rather a soft one in the end Arsenal were able to hold and they didn’t looked perturbed even for a second with the sending of Rambo

 Later the manager said:
"A difficult game played at a frenetic pace throughout. We could have won it but they had chances as well. In the end we didn't lose and hopefully we will make it at home. Both yellow cards for Aaron Ramsey are unbelievable When you see the fouls they have made today it's not serious. Just not serious."

The gunners have to be worried of players they are loosing, Gibbs is out and now Arteta in a protective boot in the end  will be worrying to the manager.

The only positives is the German Trio are back to contention for the trip to goodison Park at Saturday afternoon, and hope they will give the squad the needed spark again.

In other results of the evening

	Aalborg BK 1-1 Apoel Nicosia
	Lille 0-1 FC Porto
	NK Maribor 1-1 Celtic
	Slovan Bratislava 1-1 BATE Borisov
	Standard Liège 0-1 Zenit St Petersburg

	Besiktas 0-0 Arsenal
	FC Copenhagen 2-3 Bayer 04 Leverkusen
	FC Red Bull Salzburg 2-1 Malmö FF
	Napoli 1-1 Athletic Bilbao
	Steaua Bucharest 1-0 Ludogorets Razgrad

Next seven days is vital for all the teams to be in the final group stages to participate in Europe most adored competition.

Till then Bye