price for naive defending as a late goal from Robert Lewandowski
condemned the hosts to a 2-1 Champions League Group F defeat
to Borussia Dortmund at the Emirates Stadium.
The Gunners had done well to fight back from going
behind on 16 minutes when Henrikh Mkhitaryan drilled
the ball in after Aaron Ramsey had given away
possession on the edge of his own penalty area.
Olivier Giroud's close-range strike sent the teams
into the break on level terms, before substitute
Santi Cazorla curled a 20-yard effort against the
woodwork.
All of Arsenal's efforts, though, were undone as Dortmund - last
season's beaten finalists - netted with just eight minutes left on
the counter-attack through Lewandowski to ruin Wenger's 64th
birthday and leave the Gunners still with work to do to qualify for
the knockout stages.
'We put ourselves on the back foot with the first goal and naive
for the second goal,' he said. 'If you look at the number of saves
our keeper had to make tonight and you concede two goals, you
can say that we can only look at ourselves for not being mature
enough in situations like that.
'If you cannot win the game, you don't lose it. Especially in the
second half when we were on top, we made things difficult for
ourselves by giving them the second goal.'
Lewandowski's goal came after a lucky escape for the Pole, who
was only shown a yellow card by Swedish referee Jonas
Eriksson when he clashed with Laurent Koscielny, and looked to
have caught the defender with a stray elbow.
'It looked like [it could have been a red card] but I haven't seen it
well,' Wenger added. 'But the referee was in a much better
position than I was and didn't decide to do it. I will have to look at
it again, I don't know.'
England midfielder Jack Wilshere was replaced in the second half
having been troubled by an ankle problem, which is not expected
to keep him out of the weekend's game at Crystal Palace.
Wenger said: 'You could see that he was not completely himself
and that is why I decided to take him off.
'At the moment it is his desire to play that gets him through the
game. It looks like he was handicapped after the first tackle he
got. He looked like he landed awkwardly. He looked to me that he
limped a little bit.
'We will see how he responds in the next two or three days, we
have to wait for the medical assessment.'
Arsenal now find themselves in a three-way fight for top spot in
their group on six points, along with Dortmund and Napoli - who
beat Marseille 2-1 - and will need a better result when they
travel to Germany in two weeks time.
'It is tight and difficult for us, but possible,' said Wenger. 'You
have three teams with six points, and we have played twice at
home and once away, so that means we need a result away
from home - but we can do that.'
Dortmund boss Jurgen Klopp, who watched from the stands
because of a touchline ban, felt his side were the worthy victors
in London.
'I saw my team fighting and for us we deserved to win this
game,' he said.
'Winning abroad in London, of course you need a bit of luck for
that but if you manage to make the difference with one extra
goal then I think you also deserve it.
'If you watched this game not for Arsenal and not for Dortmund,
you can say maybe Arsenal had some better situations but they
played at home and we didn't come here to dominate Arsenal in
London, we came here to get a result and that's what we did.'
