As if losing the opening match of our Champions League campaign wasn’t hurtful enough, Dinamo Zagreb’s manager, Zoran Mamic, has decided to rub salt in our wounds.

With several world class international players in the Arsenal starting lineup, Zagreb would have been prepared for a fast-paced evening with plenty of our typical slick passing and fluid style of football. No matter who we brought to their home ground, they would have put up a fight. However, what arrived in Croatia was a team of players who looked as if they already thought they had three points in the bag, and weren’t really bothered about how they did it.

After the match, Zagreb’s boss actually seemed completely underwhelmed by Arsenal’s performance, admitting that we’d done exactly what they’d predicted we would and we were definitely not world class.

“Arsenal is one of the best teams who ever played here and they did exactly what we agreed they would do,” he said.

“We thought it would be very important to close the middle, to stop the fast passes.

“That’s what we did and it’s nothing new. We have already seen other teams who beat Arsenal use the same tactics. This is a good way to beat them.”

Mamic added, “Arsenal has top four top international players, and other top players compared to Dinamo, but they are not world class. We just concentrated in not letting them come to the ball. It was probably one our best games tactically.”

The worst part is, Mamic is right. We’ve seen what happened against his team happen too many times now and it’s frustrating to see from a fan’s point of view but must be great for the opposition. They know just how beatable we are and, unless we make a change, this is only going to continue.