Croatian nightmare for Gunners

Olivier Giroud was sent off as Arsenal made a nightmare start to their Champions League campaign with a shock 2-1 home defeat at Dinamo Zagreb.

An Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain own goal had already put the hosts in front before the Frenchman was given his marching orders for a second bookable offence before the interval.

Zagreb doubled their advantage through Junior Fernandes' second-half header before Theo Walcott pulled one back for the visitors, but it was too little too late for the English side.

Arsenal went into the game with fans expecting a positive result in a group where Bayern Munich are widely tipped to take top spot. But now even second place could prove tricky for the Gunners and they will have to show a dramatic improvement in the remaining five games of the group stages. There is still a long way to go but Arsenal certainly need to up their game after such a poor showing in Croatia.

Arsene Wenger didn't put out his strongest starting line-up but the players chosen should still have been more than capable of seeing off their opponents and it definitely cannot be used as an excuse for the bad result. We were just simply not good enough.

Arsenal, who were playing in the Champions League for the 18th consecutive season, should have made their experience count and put in a far better display than the one given to their travelling support.

The Gunners didn't actually start too badly and almost took the lead inside the opening 10 minutes, but Zagreb goalkeeper Eduardo was on hand to tip Giroud's header around a post. Giroud went close again when his deflected header hit a post before Eduardo reacted quickly to block the rebound.

The striker, who was heavily criticised for his performance against Monaco in last season's Champions League, went into the referee's notebook when he received his first yellow card of the evening for dissent.

Things went from bad to worse for the Gunners when their Croatian opponents opened the scoring after 24 minutes. Josip Pivaric's shot was well saved by David Ospina but the ball rebounded in off the unfortunate Oxlade-Chamberlain. It was a lucky goal for Zagreb but the Gunners couldn't complain too much as they hadn't exactly set the match alight either.

Arsenal's task got even harder when they were reduced to 10 men when Giroud picked up his second yellow card of the night five minutes before the break. Giroud caught Ivo Pinto and, although some pundits thought the decision was harsh, it was still a silly challenge from the forward when he knew he was already on a yellow card.

El Arabi Hilal Soudani came close to doubling Zagreb's advantage in the early stages of the second half but his header hit a post. Zagreb made no mistake after 58 minutes when Fernandes headed home Paulo Machado's corner to put the hosts in firm control.

Arsenal finally had something to cheer about when Walcott reduced the deficit to one goal 11 minutes from time. The England international latched onto an expertly-timed through ball from Alexis Sanchez before calmly slotting the ball beyond Eduardo.

Although the Gunners had been very poor on the night, you would have thought that the goal would at least spur them on to make a game of it for the final 11 minutes of the game, but it didn't. It was Zagreb, in fact, who looked more like scoring and only a smart save from Ospina denied Ante Coric a goal in stoppage time.

Zagreb held on to extend their impressive unbeaten run, while Arsenal will desperately need to recover quickly from this set-back to revive their European dream.

THE OPPONENTS
Many would have no doubt expected Arsenal to coast to victory prior to the game and maybe the Gunners will be accused of taking their opponents too lightly. I still feel this is a game we should have won and that is not me being disrespectful to the opposition either. We wasted some early opportunities to score and Giroud's sending off appeared to kill off any hopes we had of salvaging anything from the game.

There are no excuses though, we were beaten by the better team on the day and Zagreb deserve credit for this. While we shouldn't hide behind our failings on the night, our Croatian opponents should be given more credit for the job they did on us.

The result extended Dinamo Zagreb's unbeaten run to 42 games in all competitions and that achievement should not go unnoticed. I don't think Zagreb will get any points off Bayern Munich, but who knows what they will do against Olympiakos.

Although it is too early to call how the group will finish after just one game, we have certainly given ourselves an uphill struggle and really need to turn things around quickly.

GROUP F
Bayern Munich are in control of the group following their 3-0 win over Olympiakos and it would be a huge surprise if they fail to do what many are expecting and that is to win the group.

It is not impossible to get a result against them as we are unbeaten in our last two Champions League trips to face the German giants, but realistically we are playing for second place and even that isn't a guarantee.

It is very early stages for Arsenal in Group F, with five games still to play, but the Zagreb defeat means that the next game at home against Olympiakos now takes on even more importance. We already knew we would have to take as many points as possible off Zagreb and Olympiakos to stand a chance in this group and we have already dropped points to one of them. It doesn't look too good but the manager and the players need to make sure it doesn't derail our season and that we put in down to simply a bad day at the office, then regroup and recover with a huge performance in the next round of matches.

MY FINAL THOUGHTS
It was a poor and inexcusable start to our Champions League campaign but let's not forget we lost our opening European fixture last season 2-0 to Borussia Dortmund and still qualified out of the group stages. All is not lost just yet but we need to show a massive improvement in the near future to improve our chances of doing anything in Europe's elite competition this year.

How we respond to this set-back will be key and it is hard to tell whether our next fixture is the ideal or worst possible one at this time.

Our next match sees us travel to champions Chelsea in the league. Chelsea have made a nightmare start in the league and some may say that now is the best time to play them. However, Jose Mourinho's men did record a 4-0 win over Maccabi Tel Aviv in their opening Champions League game. The Blues will be eager to get back to winning ways in the league and may well come out all guns blazing against us as another defeat for the champions would be unthinkable surely!? But the pressure is still on Chelsea and they will be the side fully expected to get a result. While Chelsea will be looking to put an end to their nightmare start in the Premier League, Arsenal will also be out to prove a point. The Gunners will want to make sure they well and truly put their horror show against Dinamo Zagreb to bed with a huge display against Chelsea. Chelsea are still the huge favourites for this game but no matter how the result ends up we must make sure we put in a performance of epic proportions and one that we can be proud of.

COME ON YOU GUNNERS