Vito Mannone's protection fails to reach required standard

Matthew Norman
17 Sep 2009

No one who watched this effervescent if curiously amateurish encounter in Belgium, least of all Arsene Wenger, will be fooled by either the result or the stirring recovery that produced it. On this form, Arsenal have as realistic a shot at reaching the Champions League Final as Accrington Stanley.

All that saved them from humiliation was their stoicism in the face of an unforgettably shambolic start, as the Premier League's most anaemic defence picked up precisely where it had left off on Saturday afternoon.

Factoring in the three goals Manchester City scored towards the end of that Adebayor-dominated Eastlands classic, Standard Liege's brace in the opening minutes took Arsenal's tally to five conceded in barely 20 minutes of play. Quite a statistic for the would-be champions of England and Europe.

For Euro debutant goalkeeper Vito Mannone, the hardest of hearts might have broken. Picture the lad's breathless rapture as Wenger informed him that he would be realising the boyhood ambition to appear in the planet's most lustrous club competition.

Beware what you wish for, and all that. His first touch was to retrieve the ball from his net after Eduardo's show-pony back flick gifted Eliaquim Mangala a facile finish.

At this point you assumed that Wenger was treating his dug out to a trademark paranoid rant about UEFA's wickedness in rescinding the Croat's two game ban for the alleged diving of which he has been acquitted.

A minute later, what at first looked a dive by Liege's Milan Jovanovic, but on closer inspection appeared the faintest flick of his ankle by William Gallas, brought a penalty, and ensured that Mannone's second touch was an exact replica of his first.

His one consolation was that, without breaking sweat and in world record time, he was guaranteed immortality as the answer to a pub quiz question.

A pub team, and the morning after the George Best Memorial Lock-In at that, is what Arsenal resembled, and it did them credit that they refused to disintegrate in an opening group fixture they could ill afford to lose.

Gradually they began to exert dominion over useful if lightweight opponents whose mobility in attack and defensive indiscipline eerily mirrored themselves.

Their salvation came via the unlovely form of Nicklas Bendtner, quite a handful here if nothing like the talent he imagines himself (mind you, not Pele, Cruyff, Maradona nor Zidane was half the player he imagines himself). Once the bashful Dane had finished neatly in the embers of the first half, Liege were left hanging precariously on as Tomas Rosicky took charge of the second with his elegant and, at times exquisite, passing.

Arsenal still needed a gigantic piece of luck. By a miracle of biblical proportions, the referee and his assistants simultaneously succumbed to the ophthalmic disorder Arsene Wenger Syndrome By Proxy, and failed to see that Alex Song was 197 miles offside when he ostentatiously used a forearm to guide the ball across goal for Thomas Vermaelen to prod gleefully home.

Eduardo then made reparations for his early self-indulgence by kneeing in a Cesc Fabregas corner, and Arsenal survived the last 10 minutes with relative ease.

They had attacked Liege with typical verve and creativity, admirably so in the absence of Andrey Arshavin, Theo Walcott and Robin van Persie, and yet again defended like hungover dolts.

While that won't prevent them qualifying for the knock-out stage of this interminable competition, they will be sliced to ribbons if they replicate this porous form against mightier opponents than the plucky little Kim Clijsters-worshippers of Standard Liege.