Your boys lacked motivation, Arsene

But the Gunners appeared to struggle for motivation and when Mikael Silvestre was caught out of position and Emmanuel Eboue was late in deploying the offside trap, it was game over for Arsene Wenger's boys.

Fernando's slide-rule pass released Lisandro Lopez, who rifled the ball past a helpless Manuel Almunia in the visitors' goal.

Alexander Song worked hard in midfield while, at times, Denilson, Abou Diaby and Aaron Ramsey provided flashes of quality but the 4-2-3-1 system Wenger is increasingly favouring in European away games left the Gunners somewhat exposed in wide areas.

Consequently, full backs Eboue and Silvestre were sucked into areas they should not occupy while Cristian Rodriguez and Lopez, in particular, caused a host of problems.

The same could not be said for Nicklas Bendtner, who was utterly anonymous and only served to underline the importance of first-choice pair Emmanuel Adebayor and Robin van Persie.

Time must be running out for the Danish striker to prove he is capable of playing at this level in a system that demands good link-up play and intelligent running.

Arsenal had no real presence in attack and mustered just four shots in the game, meaning defensively mistakes were always going to be expensive.

Carlos Vela was deployed on the left-wing but it rendered him unable to make any real impact on the game.