Arsenal suffered a minor setback to their hopes of qualifying for the knockout stages of the Champions League as they fell to Shakhtar Donetsk 2-1 at the Donbass stadium.
And it will be a former Gunner who will make the headlines; Eduardo scored the winning goal to leave Arsenal with work still to do if they are to top Group H.
Manager Arsene Wenger made seven changes to the team that beat West Ham at the Emirates 1-0 on Saturday, with Jack Wilshere, Theo Walcott, Nicklas Bendtner and Craig Eastmond replacing the injured Andrei Arshavin, Skipper Cesc Fabregas, Denilson and Alex Song.
Arsenal opened the score after just ? minutes when Wilshere pinpoint pass found Theo Walcott who took advantage of his thunderous pace to breeze past the Shakhtar defence and slot the ball past goalkeeper Andriy Pyatov.
But the home side grew in confidence as the half progressed and were soon causing problems for the gunners and just before the half- hour mark they managed to pull level. Srna’s freekick from the left found the head of Dimytro Chygrynskiy and deflected off the unfortunate Eastmond into the net.
As half-time approached Arsenal began to string together some fluid moves but were to be undone by one of their former players as Shakhtar pulled in front. Srna disposed left back Gael Clichy to find find Eduardo, who calmly slotted the ball past Fabianski to turn the game around and give the Ukrainian team the lead.
The second half was similar to the first with Arsenal passing the ball and Shakhtar strongly holding on to their one goal advantage, Theo Walcott was the closest to getting Arsenal’s equaliser but to his and Arsene Wenger’s despair the second goal never came and Arsenal was forced to their first defeat of this year’s competition.
Despite their loss Arsene Wenger was optimistic that he’s team will learn from this loss he said: “We have learned the lesson that at this level you cannot lose focus at any time and we were punished for this. But we still in a strong position in the group. We lost concentration but we must keep on fighting and we will see in the end”.
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