Wenger laments Gunners naivety

Share Arsene Wenger felt his Premier League leaders paid the price for naive defending as a late goal from Robert Lewandowski condemned the hosts to a 2-1 UEFA 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 an escape for the Pole, who was only shown a yellow card when he clashed with Laurent Koscielny, and looked to have caught the defender with a stray elbow.

"It looked like

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